Would you believe a journalist who's studied global warming science for 8 years?

Question

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1962188.htm#transcript

"Mark Lynas is a journalist who has read widely on climate science and climate projections. His research has taken more than 8 years. He speaks with Michelle Field about his scenarios for the world's ecosystems based on each degree of average change in global temperature. He explains why the move from 2 degrees to 3 degrees is crucial, due to tipping points. Two processes are likely to happen at this point. The Amazon rainforest will collapse and burn, releasing more carbon, and the world's soils will also be releasing carbon. This will push the Earth across other thresholds which will make the warming unstoppable."

"For his new book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, he has read everything relevant at Oxford University's Radcliffe Science Library. He understands climate projections in a way that I've never seen a journalist do before"

8+ years of research. GW skeptics - do you distrust Lynas?

Lynas' purpose was to study the science behind global warming with no preconceived notions, in an unbiased manner. After 8+ years of research he agrees with the scientific consensus.

His book will be next on my reading list when I'm done with Monbiot's "Heat".

Answer 1

I would definitely consider what he says as more credible than most, but i would also take what he says with a grain of salt, because I don't know exactly why he decided to study it for 8 years.
Most scientists have experience studying things objectively, and a journalist, even with the best intentions, could not possibly have complete objectivity when viewing an issue. Most of them aren't even used to exercising objectivity.

If you study an issue, with a preconcieved idea in mind, chances are you can find data to support it. If you study the raw science, and it leads you to that idea, it is far more credible.

This is the problem with the global warming debate today, it is mostly occuring between journalists, who get their facts wrong and give the other side solid talking points that have to be debunked by people who actually know the facts.

Answer 2

Yes, I distrust him.

He is a journalist, as you say, not a scientist, so he goes on information from scientists, and sifts it out, to assemble a whole that meets journalistic standards.

If many scientists are biased, and many are to a surprisingly large amount, he will pick up that bias, I am fairly sure, not being a scientist, and pass it on.

He also will not likely have gone searching for other scientists not looked upon highly by the press, and gotten their views and given them full weight..

I have trouble seeing that when the temperature tips. as he said, the Amazon forest will suddenly burn. The earth's temperature will be nowhere the ignition point of dry paper, let alone jungle plants. For another thing, at the rate of jungle destruction and replacement with Oil Palms by the giant international companies making big bucks off the tree-planting "carbon credits", there will not be any jungle to burn, and no inhabitants either, for that matter.

And I doubt he puts in that this tearing out jungle for oil palms is raising the CO2 faster, as they do not take as much out of the atmosphere as a growing jungle. Plus we lose all the uncataloged plant and animal species that MIGHT have some good for mankind.

I do not question that the Oxford Library is good, but does it have a copy of EVERYTHING relevant? Or just wht they received?

It is unfortunate but true that at least some prominent scientific journals do not publish otherwise scholarly papers solely on the basis of an author's political or personal ethical leanings. Things unrelated to the paper's contents. And if unpublished, in a "good" journal, those inputs are lilely to perish, not be read by a journalist.

Has this one corrected for the bias in the journals and possibly in the library?

And I will believe a lot more if he has pointed out that the models for the global warming today also will show it should have been good squash and cotton growing climate in the Peruvian Andes in 10,000 BC, as just came out in the news.

A good model will not suppress the MWP and the LIA when it calculates the climate. Those were historical parts of our climate. If the model is wrong, why put faith in the results?

Oh, and if the warming is unstoppable, it will proceed to infinity, and scientists elsewhere can study the very basic particles as the earth's temperature heads to upward indefinitely. Radiating like a small Quasar!!

"Unstoppable" is a journalistic expression, not usually a scientific one.

I wonder...with all the extra carbon coming along, and all the heat, will it not use up all the oxygen and start turning the Carbon Dioxide to Carbon Monoxide; A greenhouse gas, but less potent, I believe. Does his book speak to this subject? And is it affordable?

Based on your review of the book and the statements, yeah, I distrust him. Sounds like another sensationalist journalist; the Amazon Forest catching fire sounds like National Enquirer news!

Answer 3

I don't distrust him, or am much of a skeptic. It is apparent that he overlooks a very important GW and ice age principal. Maybe he discusses these issues in his book but this planets ecosystem operates in a closed system. Where one area dries, another gets wetter. A skeptic sees this as one a desert the other a flood. But more probable since this planet is 3/5 covered in vegitation and a plant/bush at estimated at 80,000 years old tells me where one area dries, the other thrives. The Amazon may dry and burn but the pines and furs of the northern hemispheres will thrive. I believe we will lose millions, maybe even billions of people in the next 50 years. The one thing I know for sure. This Planet will live on.

Answer 4

If he can explain to me how cars and industry has warmed us from the last iceage, I'll start believing the guy.
I won't deny the warming. It's normal.
Besides...His 8 year study doesn't seem to mention anything about the "new iceage scare" back in the 70's that the were blaming pollution on.
Same story, different temperature results.

Answer 5

I'll consider reading his book as long as he sticks to science and avoids prostituting himself to career politicians, such as the Pied Piper of Nashville.

Answer 6

Feedbacks in nature are rare. When conditions ARE right for a feedback, the feedback is inevitable. If we are within a degree or two of a 'tipping point', then we'll hit that tipping point one way or another.

In other words, why hasn't it happened already? A little increase in CO2 causes warming which realeases more CO2 out of the oceans, which causes more increases in temperature which causes...

The earth's climate is more stable than you are giving it credit for. Forcings tend to produce molifiers which stablize climate.

Answer 7

I would believe that this so called journalist knows exactly where the money is and how to create controversy where human dignity should be just to sell the bastard words of deceit.

Answer 8

Isn't it true that there was already a mini ice-age back in the 16th or 17th century?

Answer 9

A new book eh? Sounds interesting. I might just have to check it out.

Answer 10

Yes it is hard to believe that there are people who deny this is happening. Kind of like thinking the world is flat.