When they play scientist, bad things happen.

Unlike a reporter, a legitimate scientist doesn't report conclusions until the evidence can only lead to a single conclusion. I know this because I am a scientist. I don't mouth off about something until I'm damn sure its the only possibility. Why?? Because people who don't know all the facts and back story (as I and my collegues do) will take my statements and run with them for their own purposes. If I spout off something that is only possibly correct - it gets quoted as prophecy by people who mistake my self-confidence for confidence in my conclusions. They then draw their own conclusions based on what I told them and before you know it I'm up the proverbial creek without a paddle. This happens so much it's one of the biggest reasons scientists and engineers fear going to project meetings.

That is what is happening in the realm of enviromental sciences. Scientists, who mean well, are speaking out of turn about topics with conclusions that are far far from demonstratable. Reporters, looking for a scoop, are quoting them and asking the public to extrapolate about the end of the world - based on one or two statements about very specific situations referred to by an unfortunate enviromental scientist.

I have no doubt in my mind that eventually it will come to be demonstrated that humanity negatively impacts the planetary weather systems. However until that happens it would be best to let the scientists do their jobs and wait to release the story until AFTER they have finished.

Doing this does not in any way hinder the goal of reducing our footprint, recycling, reducing consumption, and making our processes and products more efficient.

We let reporters be experts on everything now days and for the most part Americans get their "news" or "information" that they base everyday decisions on from reporters that express more opinion than fact.

Somehow opinions then become facts and create confusion when reality contradicts these opinions.

So its not really the reporters fault its the intellectual laziness of those that consume the drivel that is most disturbing.

Global warming is a particularly stark example of this artifact.Most everyone sees the litter, knows the air we breathe has lost a lot of its purity in just the last few years, and we are experiencing water and food shortages like never before.If we paint with to broad a brush the dissent drowns out those who really have good points about environmental decline.

Forgive me, for I am just an ignorant man; but didn't this reporter just bend over backwards to try and turn something, increased ice mass in the south, into something terrible, by speculation, generalization, and rhetoric? He has no science to back him up, but is relying heavily on the notion that most of his readers want very much to agree that the sky is falling, so he'll just put any argument or small notion that man-made environmental changes aren't all that bad, to rest, simply by telling you so. But don't read too closely. He may well be telling us to just keep our eyes shut tight, and we'll destroy big oil, overcome the awesome damage that China and India are bringing to bear, and the world will be bright green, indeed (except where it should be white and fluffy). Oh, and forget that the earth's temperature hasn't increased at all in like...oh, a dozen years. What a hack! And what a bunch of true believers you all are for drinking his, and Al Gore's hastily concocted brew.

Sicily,

First of all you are replying to two skeptics and claiming they are true believers. Take a look at their posts.

Secondly, where in the article did the author call for any sort of action, state that this particular set of data means the world is ending or whatever.

Finally, please read the whole article. Ice mass in the south is not increasing. Oceanic ice mass has been, but inland ice mass has been decreasing for a net decrease.

You seem to be projecting what you expect an environmentalist discussion will look like.

If you light a fire in a log cabin, the cabin gets warmer. If you light a billion fires on a single planet, it's possible the planet gets warmer, too.

So I don't have a problem with the logic of global warming. The journalism relating to it is, however, disastrous.

Journalists desperately try to dramatise science stories, hence all this footage of melting ice and stranded polar bears. Mt Kilimanjaro is bare of snow, we're told.

Trouble is, this kind of reporting is hostage to fortune; I was in Kenya last year and Kilimanjaro was covered in snow. This is enough to increase anyone's suspicions about the truth of global warming.

I doubt very much whether it's possible to accurately model earth's future climate, but journalists keep promoting these doomsday scenarios to fill editorial space. Given that so many of them are now paid-up "Environmental Correspondents", their jobs depend on them doing so.

We should keep in mind that the appearance of certainty is more attractive to most people than deliberation and reasonable doubt - even though the latter is a sign of patience and thoroughness, while the former can often result from denial, self-delusion or defensiveness.

That's probably why a lot of scientists talk "out of turn" about conclusions that aren't, well, conclusive. If someone goes up to a biologist and asks him to settle a question about the field he studies (evolution, physics, climate, whatever), he knows that he is being treated as an authority figure, and is expected to behave like one - which, in our culture at least, means at least giving the appearance of absolute, unequivocal certainty. As a scientist, Eigenvector, you probably see a lot of this going on in other fields. You obviously find it frustrating.

As it is in science and academia, so it is in business, politics, you name it. I think the prevailing attitude is that you shouldn't bother to be in the field, let alone have a view/theory therein, unless you take a hard line and defend it tooth and nail. We've taken the natural human aversion to uncertainty way overboard, to the point where we have what amounts to a cultural expectation, even glorification, of inflexibility. You look weak (or think you will) if you stop shouting long enough to hear the other person's point of view, or consider the nuances and caveats of your own.

Reporters not only play with science, they practice law, they tell us what is healthy, they give romantic advice, and they certainly play politics.

Global warming is occurring, but its happened before.

smelly:

Global warming is occurring, but its happened before.

Yes, absolutely. And lots of organisms have died before when it has happened before.

Never before has there been a species with the capacity to consider long-term, generational impacts of various policies, and to plan action accordingly. Never before has there been a species with the capability to contemplate doing something about global warming.

I think the issue is whether mankinds' activities are causing it.

Just why are we supposed to do something about it?

Sometimes our fixes are worse than the problem.

But I want to breathe clean air and drink safe water.If we stuck to those goals we would be doing everyone a favor and there is no denying the necessity of thse things for our species to survive and thrive.

Maybe we don't deserve to survive.

Thank you! These rants are rediculous and not informed. I have a beef with the media too, but this article was great.