Today I read this quote from an AP story:

It is not correct to say Sandy was caused by global warming, but “the damage caused by Sandy was worse because of sea level rise,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. He said the sea level in New York City is a foot higher than a century ago because of man-made climate change.

There’s just one problem with Oppenheimer’s statement. Sea level hasn’t risen a foot over the last century because of man-made climate change. It has risen some, but definitely not a foot. How do I know this? Because the total rise over the last century for global sea level rise is about 9 inches:

Not only has sea level not risen by a foot, but there is a natural component to this sea level rise. That’s because sea level has been rising for the last 20,000 years.

(Image from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise)

You can argue how much of the sea level rise was caused by humans, but you can’t honestly argue that a foot has been caused by humans over the last 100 years.

Michael Oppenheimer has to know this basic fact about sea level rise. He served as the chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, was one of the people who began the U.N. conferences that created the Kyoto Protocol, and is on the National Academies’ Board on Energy and Environmental Studies. So why he is breathtakingly ignorant about some of the basic science about climate change?

One of my concerns with some climate “science” is the lack of transparency and reproducibility of the results. For example, as two professors of computer science explain:

 One of the foundational components of the scientific method is the idea of reproducibility (Popper 1959). In order for an experiment to be considered valid it must be replicated. This process begins with the scientists who originally performed the experiment publishing the details of the experiment. This description of the experiment is then read by another group of scientists who carry out the experiment, and ascertain whether the results of the new experiment are similar to the original experiment. If the results are similar enough then the experiment has been replicated. This process validates the fact that the experiment was not dependent on local conditions, and that the written description of the experiment satisfactorily records the knowledge gained through the experiment.

The ability to replicate models and transparency is sorely lacking in in climate science. That’s the real lesson we should learn from the release of the CRU emails. Willis Eschenbach explains this well here. For example Eschenbach writes:

Science works by one person making a claim (hypothesis), and backing it up with the data and methods that they used to make the claim. Other scientists attack the work by (among other things) trying to replicate the first scientist’s work. If they can’t replicate it, it doesn’t stand. So blocking the FOIA allowed Phil Jones to claim that his temperature record (HadCRUT3) was valid science.

 

This is not just trivial gamesmanship, this is central to the very idea of scientific inquiry. This is an attack on the heart of science, by keeping people who disagree with you from ever checking your work and seeing if your math is correct.

If you look up the definition of a straw man argument, it’s not likely you will find a better one that this argument from Thomas Friedman’s article in the NY Times:

If you follow the debate around the energy/climate bills working through Congress you will notice that the drill-baby-drill opponents of this legislation are now making two claims. One is that the globe has been cooling lately, not warming, and the other is that America simply can’t afford any kind of cap-and-trade/carbon tax.

 

But here is what they also surely believe, but are not saying: They believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050. They believe it is much better for America that the world be dependent on oil for energy — a commodity largely controlled by countries that hate us and can only go up in price as demand increases — rather than on clean power technologies that are controlled by us and only go down in price as demand increases. And, finally, they believe that people in the developing world are very happy being poor — just give them a little running water and electricity and they’ll be fine. They’ll never want to live like us.

Here’s what Ben Hale, a environmental philosopher has to say about this argument:

Screeeeeech! Say what? They believe that a mass plague is coming? That it is better for America if the world is dependent upon oil? That people in the developing world are happy being poor? He must be joking.

 

I agree that those who claim that the earth is cooling and that America can’t afford a cap-and-trade/carbon tax are making a mistake, but I wouldn’t go so far as to attribute a belief to them. For all I know, they believe almost exactly the same things I believe; they’ve just arrived at different conclusions. Maybe they’re poor reasoners.

 

(Right, I get it, his point is that such irrational beliefs are the “only possible way” of making sense of claims that the earth is cooling and that America can’t afford carbon policies, but there are better ways of making the point than redounding to absurd hyperbole. Making up beliefs of people you disagree with is a surefire way to completely misunderstand them.)

When I read Friedman’s article this morning I was irritated, so I’m glad Hale explained why Friedman’s straw man argument was so weak.