On the limits of the right to opinion

On a recent trip, I stopped at a news kiosk prior to boarding the plane and got a copy of the 24 November Wall Street Journal.  This was really so I could get change for the taxi at my destination, but I also tend to like the articles.

Apparently, though, I don't care for the editorials.  This was the issue that claimed to "reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science".  The short of it is excerpts from email archives of certain scientists at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, which include statements about researchers' efforts to block release of data under FOIA-type requests.  Since I happen to believe in the theory of anthropogenic climate change, and the editorial clearly shows the WSJ's position that global warming is bunkum, this rubbed me the wrong way.

I'm not going to support any attempt to hide raw research data.  But I do sympathize with the frustrations of somebody who is asked to release it to people whose qualifications to judge it are dubious and who will inaccurately present a selected view of it in a popular forum in such a way that sound conclusions are made to appear ludicrous or unsupported.  Ad hominem attacks and nay-saying is easy; science, properly done, is harder.

One of the fundamental problems I have with the whole global warming controversy is the number of people who make unqualified assertions based on applying their own common sense to issues that are, in fact, far more complex than they have taken the time to understand.  Take as an example (paraphrased, see original):

The claim that melting icebergs raise sea level is garbage.  My icewater doesn't overflow the glass when the ice melts.  Water expands as it freezes, and the amount of water displaced by an iceberg is equal to its weight.  So if the iceberg melts, the water level won't change at all.

On the surface, a compelling argument.  It appeals to common daily experience, so everybody feels they can judge its validity.  It references Archimedian principles of displacement, so has the air of authority.  When I read it, I thought "good point".  Unfortunately, with a little more research the argument is both specious and invalid.

It's invalid because it considers only the primary effect.  True: If an iceberg melts, the water it returns will not result in an increase in water volume.  However, if the iceberg melts, it presumably has done so because the temperature of the water has increased.  And thermal expansion means that the volume of the water will increase as well.  Sea rise.

It's specious because, regardless of whether the cited claim was represented properly (I didn't read the original paper to find out), the real argument is not that melting icebergs will raise sea levels, but that melting continental ice sheets will.  It's all that water currently above ground in Antarctica and Greenland that will provide us with beachfront property in Arizona if the temperature rises too much.

And that's a trivial example.  Get into three dimensional fluid dynamics simulations, advanced statistics, and chronological reconstruction from chemical analysis of ice cores and I'm not even going to try to make the effort that would be required to qualify me to judge detailed arguments made from first principles.

What I can, will, and have done, though, is read about those papers, and form my opinion based on the most compelling and best referenced analysis.  My belief in "global warming" is founded from reading pieces of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  Not editorials in a national fish-wrap.  Not testimony from people of dubious qualification before politically-charged House or Senate panels.  Not blogs.  The Summary for Policy Makers and pieces of the summaries of two of the three working groups.

For due diligence, I tracked down the best rebuttal I could find of AR4, and read that.   Where AR4 presented positive arguments and falsifiable theories, the ISPM nit-picked.  Where AR4 listed hundreds of active researchers in climate science, ISPM had less than a dozen.  It just wasn't compelling.

So: Everybody has a right to their own opinion?  No.  You may have a right to an informed opinion.  Even then, there may be limits on that right depending on the depth of your information and the impact of your opinion, but that's a subject for another essay.

I believe that human activity has caused environmental changes that, if unchecked, will have significant negative impacts.  Some parts of the world may not be affected as much as others.  External events may ameliorate the effects in the short or even long term.  But on the whole, if things go as it appears they will, it's going to be our grandchildren who will have to pay for our self-imposed ignorance.

My opinion.  If somebody actually reads this thing and has further information I should consider, I'll take a look.  But it better have more behind it than anything I've seen so far.