The misrepresentation of science in policy......

Ethon flew in from Colorado on his way to Mt. Caucuasus for the Thanksgiving holiday, and while he lay over at Dulles we had a little chat of the latest faux controversy over at the place by the mountains. Seems that RPJr. is upset, very upset about the misrepresentation of science in policy, but Fred Singer and Pat Michaels need not fear that their perambulations about the facts will be discussed. We must pay due attention to the dire cases that worry RP in his atelier. Of course you knew there would be a slam at Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, and indeed we are not to be disappointed. Right up there as a link to a terrible example is "On Donald Kennedy in Science, Again"

Ethon has been spending considerable time between liver lunch and liver dinner attending seminars at Boulder on exactly how to misrepresent science or anything else you want. He gave a short talk at the Rabett School on how to do it. Of course, you start with the raw material in the last paragraph of Kennedy's editorial in Science 10.1126/science.1124889

We know with confidence what has made the Gulf and other oceans warmer than they had been before: the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human industrial activity, to which the United States has been a major contributor. That's a worldwide event, affecting all oceans. When Katrina hit the shore at an upgraded intensity, it encountered a wetland whose abuse had reduced its capacity to buffer the storm, and some defective levees gave way. Not only is the New Orleans damage not an act of God; it shouldn't even be called a "natural" disaster. These terms are excuses we use to let ourselves off the hook.

Ethon showed us how to tease this apart, using each rearrangement for best effect just as RPJr. had done:

In this week’s Science magazine editor Donald Kennedy opines that “Not only is the New Orleans damage not an act of God; it shouldn’t even be called a “natural” disaster.” Could it be that he sees the significance of millions of people and trillions of dollars of property in locations exposed to repeated strikes from catastrophic storms? Unfortunately, not at all.

Prof. Kennedy is a Johnny-come-lately to exploiting Katrina for political advantage on climate change. He writes, “As Katrina and two other hurricanes crossed the warm Gulf of Mexico, we watched them gain dramatically in strength. . . We know with confidence what has made the Gulf and other oceans warmer than they had been before: the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human industrial activity, to which the United States has been a major contributor.”

I suppose one could make the convoluted case that Prof. Kennedy is [just a bad writer/only talking about statistics/dumbing-down the science/anticipating inevitable future research results] and didn’t really mean to link Katrina’s damage (or Katrina) with global warming. But he did, clearly.

You did note the clever omission of the second leg of Kennedy's argument:

When Katrina hit the shore at an upgraded intensity, it encountered a wetland whose abuse had reduced its capacity to buffer the storm, and some defective levees gave way

Misrepresentation by omission is a very useful technique of course.

Notice the ellipses in Roger's second paragraph where he brought together two paragraphs from Kennedy's editorial. See what you think about Kennedy's argument if you actually read the entire paragraph from his editorial:

Contemporary science is making it difficult to sustain such distinctions, and perhaps it can do something to clarify matters. As Katrina and two other hurricanes crossed the warm Gulf of Mexico, we watched them gain dramatically in strength. Papers by Kerry Emanuel in Nature and by Peter Webster in this journal during the past year have shown that the average intensity of hurricanes has increased during the past 30 years as the oceans have gained heat from global warming. Emanuel's Web site at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/holem/holem.html) explains the thermodynamic aspects of the relationship. The winds around the low-pressure center (the eye of the hurricane) travel across the warm surface water in a circular pattern, picking up energy. As water molecules evaporate from the surface, they contribute their energy to the storm column as they condense to form droplets, becoming sensible heat. About a third of that energy powers the hurricane's wind engine.

Such fun.