Transcript Slide 1 - climateknowledge.org

Climate Change: The Move to Action
(AOSS 480 // NRE 480)
Richard B. Rood
Cell: 301-526-8572
2525 Space Research Building (North Campus)
[email protected]
http://clasp.engin.umich.edu/people/rbrood
Winter 2016
April 12, 2016
Class Information and News
• Ctools site: CLIMATE_480_001_W16
– Record of course
• Rood’s Class MediaWiki Site
–
http://climateknowledge.org/classes/index.php/Climate_Change:_The_Move_to_Action
• A tumbler site to help me remember
– http://openclimate.tumblr.com/
• Conference of the Parties (Morocco, November 2016)
Final Synthesis: Due
• Final Synthesis: Due April 25, 2016 at 6:00
pm.
– Note points will be deducted if late without
pre-approval.
In Class Special
• If you made >=95 on first synthesis, and you want
to propose, pick your own topic for final synthesis,
you may.
– You should choose a topic that does require use of
knowledge of climate change and at least one other
subject area.
– You should include some role of ethics.
– Should pose a question or thesis at the beginning.
• Final Synthesis: Due April 25, 2016 at 6:00 pm.
– Note points will be deducted if late without preapproval.
The Current Climate (Released Monthly)
• Climate Monitoring at National Climatic
Data Center.
– http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html
• State of the Climate: Global
Outline: Class 17, Winter 2016
• Examples used to disprove and discredit
climate change.
• Forms of Rhetoric and Argument
• Argumentation
• Communication
In Groups Discuss
Examples in
Handouts
To analyze
• Look at the form of argument
• Use the principles of the scientific method
• Remember the scientific method does not
produce facts
– Knowledge
– Uncertainty (Uncertainty references)
Communication of Science-based knowledge
• “ … in the case of some people, not even
if we had the most accurate scientific
knowledge, would it be easy to persuade
them …”
Aristotle, A Treatise on Rhetoric
Important to know when rhetoric is being
used as a tactic to achieve a goal.
Rhetoric and Form of Argument
• Are attacks to discredit the person or field prominent:
dishonesty, fraud, conflict of interest, conspiracy
– Accusation that ignoring information
• Labels: alarmists, warmists, denialists, uneducated,
conservative, liberal
• Moral levers of trust and distrust
• Extract single pieces of information in absence of others
and hold as contradiction
• Reaching metaphors: The world was warmer and had
more carbon dioxide when there dinosaurs and no
humans
Some References
• What to Do? What to Do?
• Rhetoric and Form of Argument
• Skeptical Science
• Marshall Institute: Climate Change
• The Heritage Foundation
• Watts Up With That?
More formal notions of argumentation
• From
– Persuasion, Argumentation, and Common
Fallacies
• Kenneth Alfano ([email protected])
• Erik Hildinger ([email protected] )
– Posted on Ctools in Readings
A Critical Consideration: Audience
It is essential to analyze your audience(s) prior to any
persuasive endeavor.
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How much do they know about the issue?
What are their predispositions or interests?
How will your request impact them?
What kind of personality types are involved?
This will influence your document’s (or
presentation’s) organization, level, tone, appeal,
etc.
APPEALS: Three main types
• The Appeal to Reason
• The Appeal to Emotion
• The Appeal to Ethics
They’re used in different situations.
In technical areas, two of these appeals predominate:
• Appeal to Reason – typically for the most
“direct” issue at hand; reasons why the money,
action, belief, etc. would logically lead to a
desirable outcome…
• Appeal to Ethics – usually as a limitation on
what you can do in pursuit of other goals, but
sometimes even a goal in itself!
• The arguments about climate change are often
political, not technical, not scientific
Other distinctions in argument
• Argument of Fact
– This is about what is or is not.
– Example: “Global warming will cause
consequence X by year Y, with a statistical
likelihood of Z%.”
• Argument of Policy
– This is about what should or should not be.
– Example: “A Z% chance of consequence X is
sufficient grounds to take action A, but not
necessarily action B.”
Relationship between arguments of fact and
arguments of policy
• Facts often need to be established before you
discuss policy.
• Arguments of fact often precede arguments of
policy.
• You need to carefully parse the distinction
between them, especially where they tend to get
conflated.
• Both need support, but in different ways.
A note on policy arguments:
While policy arguments may be motivated
by ethics or morality, it is more likely for
such arguments to succeed if they
emphasize expediency, advantage, or
other self-interested motives of the
audience.
It’s not a perfect world, and we don’t get
very far by pretending it is…
Common Logical Fallacies
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Circular reasoning
False cause
Hasty generalization
Irrelevant appeal
Non sequitur
Undistributed middle
Equivocation
Circular reasoning
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Also called “begging the question”
Presuming one’s conclusion, A => A
Gives the illusion of a deductive step
Ex. “John is lazy, because he doesn’t
work hard.”
• Often hides in the form of re-stating
assertions with largely synonymous
phrasing, disguised as support
• Also hides behind rhetorical queries
False cause
• Presuming that correlation implies causation
• Often arises in cases where there is a
temporal proximity (“post hoc”), e.g. “X
follows Y a lot, so Y must cause X”
• Can overlap w/ fallacies involving hasty
generalization of insufficient data
• Generally only a prospective study can
conclusively indicate causation
Hasty generalization
• Essentially, insufficient data
– Quantitatively (n value) and/or qualitatively
(e.g. not accounting for all appropriate
confounding variables)
• Often overlaps with false/premature
causation assertions
• Unlike many other fallacies, this one can
be a matter of degree and thus not always
as logically objective
Irrelevant appeal
• Invoking true facts that superficially appear
to bolster a point, but are actually inapt
• Commonly occurs with credentials, e.g.
appealing to an expert in one scientific
discipline as a purported authority for a
contention in a substantially different one
• Can come in degrees, such as overstating
the value of an authority
Non sequitur
• Similar to irrelevant appeal, except making
no effort to “simulate” relevance even
superficially
• Commonly involves seeking to distract from
an unfounded assertion via emotion, such
as humor or fear or affection
• “Jane is a good and honest person, so she
must be a very good employee”
Undistributed middle
• A basic fallacy of set theory – presuming
that because there is overlap, that there is
no non-overlap
• “All iPods are portable electronic devices,
and all smartphones are portable
electronic devices, therefore all iPods are
smartphones.”
• Related to fallacies of presumptions of
mutual inclusivity/exclusivity
Equivocation
• Using a word in 2 different senses/meanings
in the same context, hoping the audience
won’t notice the “mirror trick”
• Of course, as with most fallacies, some are
easier to spot than others
• “Noisy children are a headache. Aspirin
makes headaches go away. Therefore,
aspirin makes noisy children go away.”
(http://dict.space.4goo.net/dict?q=equivocation)
Some summary points of Climate Change
political arguments
PA1: Just a Theory
• A common statement is that greenhouse gas is just a theory,
equating theory with conjecture.
– Theory is not conjecture, it is testable.
• Theory suggests some amount of cause and effect – a physical system,
governed by quantitative conservation equations.
– Theory is not fact, it can and will change.
– Need to consider the uncertainty, and the plausibility that the theory
might be wrong.
• Often it is stated in this discussion that gravity is only a theory.
– True, and the theory of gravity is a very useful theory, one put forth by
Newton.
– True, we don’t exactly understand the true nature of the force of gravity,
there are “why” questions.
– Formally, Newton’s theory of gravity is incorrect – that’s what Einstein
did.
• Still, it is a very useful and very accurate theory, that allows us, for example,
to always fall down and never fall up – and go to the Moon with some
confidence.
PA2: Greenhouse Effect
• This is generally not a strongly argued point. Warming of the
surface due to greenhouse gases make the planet habitable.
– Habitable? Water exists in all three phases?
• Water and carbon dioxide and methane are most important natural
greenhouse gases.
• Often a point of argument that water is the “dominant” gas, so
traces of CO2 cannot be important.
– Water is dominant … often said 2/3 rds of warming. Because there is
so much water in the ocean, the amount of water vapor in the
atmosphere is largely determined by temperature. (The relative
humidity.)
– This is where it is important to remember the idea of balance, the
climate is in balance, and it is differences from this balance which we
have co-evolved with that are important.
• Burning fossil fuels is taking us away from this balance. It is like opening or
closing a crack in the window … it makes a big difference.
PA3: What happens to this CO2
• A “new” political argument: CO2 from fossil fuels is small
compared to what comes from trees and ocean. True.
But a lot goes into trees and oceans as well. So it is the
excess CO2, the CO2 on the margin that comes from
fossil fuel burning. Not all of this goes into the trees and
oceans, and it accumulates in the atmosphere.
• There are 8.6 Petagrams C per year emitted
– 3.5 Pg C stay in atmosphere
– 2.3 Pg C go into the ocean
– 3.0 Pg C go into the terrestrial ecosystems
• Terrestrial ecosystems sink needs far better quantification
– Lal, Carbon Sequestration, PhilTransRoySoc 2008
• It’s a counting problem! One of our easier ones.
PA4: Cycles
• Some say that there are cycles, they are natural,
they are inevitable, they show that human have
no influence.
– Cycles? yes  natural? Yes
• Inevitable  There are forces beyond our control
– We can determine what causes cycle; they are not
supernatural
• Greenhouse gases change
• “Life” is involved  ocean and land biology
• Humans are life  This is the time humans release CO2
PA4: Cycles  CO2 and T
• At the turn around of the ice ages, temperature
starts to go up before CO2; hence, T increase is
unrelated to CO2
– Need to think about time and balance here …
• There are sources of T and CO2 variability other than the
radiative greenhouse gas effect.
– If CO2 increases in the atmosphere, there will be enhanced
surface warming, but is the increase large enough to change
temperature beyond other sources of variability?
– If T increases, there could be CO2 increases associated with,
for instance, release from solution in the ocean
– CO2 increases could come from burning fossil fuels, massive
die off of trees, volcanoes  have to count, know the balance.
See Shakun, Nature, 2012
PA4: Cycles: Ice Ages
• In 1975 scientists were predicting an ice age.
Now warming. You have no credibility, why
should we believe you now.
– In 1975, small number of papers got a lot of press
attention.
– 2010  Think scientific method
• Observations, observations, observations
• Improved theory, predictions, cause and effect
• Results reproduced my many investigators, using many
independent sources of observations
• Consistency of theory, prediction, and observations
• Probability of alternative description is very small.
PA5:
The last 1000 years: The hockey stick
Surface temperature and CO2 data from the
past 1000 years. Temperature is a northern
hemisphere average. Temperature from
several types of measurements are consistent
in temporal behavior.
 Medieval warm period
 “Little ice age”
 Temperature starts to follow CO2 as CO2
increases beyond approximately 300 ppm,
the value seen in the previous graph as the
upper range of variability in the past
350,000 years.
PA5: Hockey Stick
• This is the “hockey stick” figure and it is
very controversial. Quality of data,
presentation, manipulation, messaging.
– Rood blog
– Nature on Hockey Stick Controversy
• There are some issues with data,
messaging, emotions of scientists here,
but the data are, fundamentally, correct.
PA5: Hockey Stick: Science
• But place the surface temperature record of the
hockey stick in context using the scientific
method.
– Reproduction of results by independent researchers,
through independent analyses
– Verification of results in other types of observations 
sea level rise, ocean heat content, earlier start of
spring
– Consistency of signals with theory  upper
tropospheric cooling
– Evaluation of alternative hypotheses
PA5: Hockey Stick: Temperature source
• There has developed a discussion between those who believe in
surface temperature data and those who believe in satellite data.
– Scientifically, it should not be a matter of belief, but validation. Each
system has strengths and weaknesses. Differences should be
reconciled, not held as proof of one over the other.
• Surface: Issues of how sited, representative, urban heat island
– If ignored (wrong), then data flawed
– If taken into account (right), then data are manipulted
• Satellite data objective and accurate?
– Read the literature! Took years to get useful temperature. Every satellite is
different, calibrated with non-satellite data
• And ultimately: Scientific method
– Reproduction of results by independent researchers, through
independent analyses
– Verification of results in other types of observations
– Consistency of signals with theory
– Evaluation of alternative hypotheses
Use of Extreme Events as Communication
Opportunity and Case Studies
• The trap or the nuance
– Was this event caused by climate change?
– Relative role of weather, climate, climate
change and other things that we do  like
build mansions on the seashore.
Outline: Class 17, Winter 2016
• Examples used to disprove and discredit
climate change.
– Three groups each with three examples
• Forms of Rhetoric and Argument
• Argumentation
• Communication