Thirteen years ago, on this day, March 9, 2009, Stefan Rahmstorf, climate scientist and oceanographer at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research spends time and readers’ bandwidth unpicking the trickery of Bjohn Lomborg, ace lukewarmist.
“And it is telling that he then goes on to draw an “inescapable” conclusion about a slow-down of sea level rise from just four years of data. This is another well-worn debating trick: confuse the public about the underlying trend by focusing on short-term fluctuations. It’s like claiming spring won’t come if there is a brief cold snap in April.”
Rebuttal in The Guardian of Lomborg´s claim that sea level is not steadily rising, March 9th 2009.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/cif-green/2009/mar/09/climate-change-copenhagen
And see this from page 17 of James Powell’s “could scientists be wrong”
http://jamespowell.org/resources/CouldScientistsBeWrong.pdf
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 389ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that denialists were stepping up their campaigns of cherry-picking, doubt-mongering and so on. The so-called lukewarmists – a more sophisticated.version of straight out denial, were stepping up their campaigns of doubt and confusion and spewing out flak, ahead of another big international gathering, this time in Copenhagen.
What I think we can learn from this
The patient work of debunking a set of misleading statements is costly and ineffective. Because the mere attempt to debunk gives the appearance that there are two more or less equal sides in a debate on this issue. There really aren’t, not equal, cognitively or in terms of numbers of working scientists.
But they want to give that impression thus – the Oregon petition, (which comes up in April on this site), and so on.
What happened next
The “Gish Gallop” technique keeps getting used, because it’s a really effective tool in the absence of an educated populace that is able to think for itself.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..