One Troll, Two Troll, Me Troll, You Troll
October 7th, 2008 by deanDuring the course of a recent e-exchange, I was reminded of the futility of tit-for-tat exchanges vis-a-vis [insert controversial topic here]. First, attempting to understand the other seems to fall by the wayside, followed by a general failure to attempt being understood (no doubt the between-the-lines understanding sort of happens, but that’s not ostensibly what’s being legitimately sought). Ultimately, there are dribbling attempts to get last words in and the sad thing just peters out.
Nevertheless, I was inspired, by the claimed lack of facile touchibility about various forms of reliable information, to ‘ogle
only to locate a third-hand, yet promising, pointer. This finding led to further ‘ogling, quickly turning up
The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change
Which contains a series of chapters of interpretations referring to the primary scientific literature.
I am not content to simply trade unsubstantiated claims in an emotional, posturing context (despite the wanking joy of doing that). I would rather trade substantiated claims and backed-up interepretations in an emotional, posturing context. I would most like to trade substantiated claims and backed-up interepretations in a dispassionate context.
That would require buy-in, and not a little work (i.e. this is an invitation to a journal club, or perhaps “sequential blogging on peer-reviewed research“). Could just be a measure of just how much Baloney Factor people may have.
October 14th, 2008 at 15:34
So anyway, back when I was having this e-exchange, one of the interlocutors was trenchant about being unable to locate any reliable information about carbon dioxide having anything to do with global warming.
That’s why I eventually got around to doing that search I mentioned.
So what I would recommend doing, at this point (maybe people have already done this!) is download the “Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing” chapter, and skim through it, looking for any reference to this sort of thing (i.e. carbon dioxide having an effect on global warming), and see what references they are citing. Might be a good idea to just look at all the figures and read the captions first, before even reading the intro. That’s what I’m going to do.
Just that. That’s all I would do at this point. I myself am going to get around to it, but now I’ve got to work out ‘n stuff. At least I’m downloading.
October 15th, 2008 at 16:12
So, a couple dozen figures, and not quite a score of reference pages. Who’d have thought that trying to get a grip on a complicated and massive part of reality would be so easy!
This is hard to do: when trying to get your head around a figure, don’t apply your ideology right up front. At least also apply the ideology your opponents would use, assuming you can imagine having opponents.
Just try to understand what’s being portrayed. Pick a figure, say one that seems to claim that anthropogenic carbon dioxide applies a radiative forcing to the climate. How did those specific numbers get plotted that way?
You’re going to have to dig into some references, which is a hardship. Online is great if you have academic access. Otherwise, you must physically go to a library and read a paper journal.
Look at the figures, get what you can; look at the methods, get what you can; read the intro, the results, the discussion, get what you can; read the abstract: are they fucking nuts?
How would someone try to fool you with the numbers or the figure design? What was left out?
This would be a good time to go over the intro to the study document chapter - that ’s what I’m going to do. Then I’ll try to look right on in to the literature based on some figure that I think relevant to that e-exchange that happened a while ago.
I think I can agree that it is indeed difficult to get one’s hands on reliable information about global warming. You essentially have to do a flanking maneuver around the pundits (including those of your own ideology), and see where the data came from, and what various interpretations of that data are.