any color you want as long as it's black

September 5, 2006 8:49 AM

To hear Rupert Murdoch's newspaper The Australian tell it, "Science" is now tempering its claims about the urgency of Global Warming. Arts and Letters Daily goes even further, declaring a "Catastrophe Postponed" on its front page. But a closer look at the meager factual content of The Australian article (as opposed to the specious inferences and dramatic allusions to "leaked IPCC documents") suggests that, in fact, "Science" has just gotten more specific about its Global Warming claims, and the real situation remains as urgent as ever if we continue on our current track. Meanwhile, in tangentially related news, Chevron is reporting a massive new oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. Not to imply any kind of conspiracy here (since, you know, "Science" has proven that actual conspiracies are an urban myth).
posted by saulgoodman (33 comments total)

This can loosely be thought of as a follow-up post to the previous discussion on media consolidation here.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:51 AM on September 5, 2006

They were quoting SCIENCE.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:00 AM on September 5, 2006

This is slightly off-topic, but what's with A&LD these days? Every other morning it has some lame screed about environmentalist scaremongers, European decadence, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I'm sure it used to be a bit better 5 years ago or so.
posted by Mocata at 9:10 AM on September 5, 2006

Okay. Twenty five years ago, a well that put out 6,000 bbl/day was a waste of time and effort. Today, it's a fairly major hit.

That's the problem, folks. It's not that the oil is gone. There's lots of oil. It's that the easy oil is going away fast. Drilling 20,000 feet down under a 7000 foot deep seabed isn't cheap -- and building the infrastructure to keep that well working is even less so.

To give you an idea of the scale, the great oil gushers of early oil exploration would pump out -- on thier own pressure, mind you -- 50,000 to 100,000 bbl/day.

So, compare that to 6000 bbl/day of pumped oil. It's a good find, don't get me wrong. But we're losing that every year to depeletion of working fields. The whole point of peak oil isn't that we're running out. It's that the easiest oil gets extracted first -- so that over time, production falls and cost of extraction rises for a given field. The meta-effect is that, naturally, you try to get oil from the easiest fields first. This is why things like the Orinoco Tar Belts in South America and the Safanyia fields near Saudi Arabia are basically untouched -- the oil is too costly to get out, compared to other fields.
posted by eriko at 9:15 AM on September 5, 2006 [2 favorites]

This is slightly off-topic, but what's with A&LD these days?

I've been wondering that myself for a couple of years now. A&LD started tilting noticeably to the right a while back (I can't recall exactly when the shift began, but I know that around that time, their editorial staff changed abruptly--I remember because I actually took the time to write them an email grumbling about the noticeable shift in editorial perspective when it happened. But I still haven't heard any explanation for the change).
posted by saulgoodman at 9:19 AM on September 5, 2006

The writeup here (and the headline in The Australian, granted) are both a lot more sensationalistic than the actual article.

Also, "leaked IPCC documents" were never mentioned in the article. The closest it comes is "A draft report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained exclusively by The Weekend Australian, offers a more certain projection of climate change than the body's forecasts five years ago." which is not exactly damning.
posted by alexei at 9:39 AM on September 5, 2006

Is it just me, or are Australian online newspapers just sewers of disinformation? I can't think of a single time in the last five years when an American publication has linked to an Australian one for any other purpose than to Left-bash. And these Aussie stories never seem to be confirmed by actual reporters anywhere else, they just get linked to death in places like the Volokh Conspiracy. Anybody hip to the Aussie journalism scene?
posted by facetious at 9:40 AM on September 5, 2006

Rupert Murdoch (whose News Corp owns Fox News, The Australian, etc.) is Australian.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:47 AM on September 5, 2006

I'm not sure what the Australian is referring to, but it sure as hell doesn't just "cut their worst-case forecast" but it also raises the "best-case forecast". That is, provided this has somehow some substance - a possibility that the IPCC in its (latest) May 2006 Press Release seems to deny:

IPCC Reports are accepted at plenary sessions where summaries for policymakers are approved line-by-line to ensure consistency with factual material contained in the full Report. Only after acceptance and approval can Reports then be considered “findings” of the IPCC. Any reference to the contents of any Working Group Report or the Synthesis Report prior to the stage of acceptance and approval at the appropriate IPCC plenary session does not represent authorized IPCC “findings”.

The Report of Working Group 1 will be finalised in early February 2007. The Working Group 2 Report will be completed in early April 2007, the Working Group 3 Report in early May 2007 and the Synthesis Report by mid-November 2007

posted by talos at 9:47 AM on September 5, 2006

I'm sorry to jump in on the same slightly off-topic topic, but ALdaily really sucks. It's gotten more and more aggressively political, with a tone that rankles and stories that seem chosen only to fit some preconceived idea. It's a shame, too, because it's the only site of its kind, so I still read it.
posted by cell divide at 9:50 AM on September 5, 2006

"In 2001, the scientists predicted temperature rises of between 1.4C and 5.8C on current levels by 2100, but better science has led them to adjust this to a narrower band of between 2C and 4.5C."

I think this is pretty much the meat of what the IPCC report actually says: The estimates have just been made slightly more precise, within the previous range of estimates. In other words, no real news here; just a minor technical revision to the original report.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:54 AM on September 5, 2006

cell divide: i agree. it's sad.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:55 AM on September 5, 2006

Rupert be damned, I still believe the Metafilter consensus: sea level is going to rise 50 feet, hurricanes will get so big Earth will have Great Red Spots just like Jupiter, cows will spontaneously combust out in the field, and it's all going to happen next week.
posted by jfuller at 9:58 AM on September 5, 2006

ice core
posted by taosbat at 9:59 AM on September 5, 2006

Also, "leaked IPCC documents" were never mentioned in the article.

Yeah--not sure why that's in the Arts and Letters Daily blurb on the article, when it's nowhere to be found in the article itself (and if the editors over at A&LD have got some inside info, I'd love to know where it's coming from, because there's no mention of leaked documents in either of the articles cited on their front page).
posted by saulgoodman at 10:02 AM on September 5, 2006

I don't understand the final two sentences. Or, rather, whatever science has or has not proven about "conspiracies", you sound a little nutty. Both the things linked to are common: discovering new undersea oil fields and political corruption where lots of money is floating around. I can guess at what you think connects all three and that it involves a conspiracy, but then, that's when I get to the "nutty" conclusion.

The conservative opposition to the idea of global warming certainly has been driven by industrial interests that would be harmed by serious response to ameliorate it. But that opposition didn't begin as, nor has it ever chiefly been a "conspiracy". As is always the case with common interests and the werewithal to do something about them, people make common cause and, certainly, here and there conspire with each other. But the real problem here isn't the conspirators anymore, not really, it's that all these common causes working together, sometimes in conspiracy, have been successful at getting their contrary ideas firmly implanted into public opinion as being very credible. Now, the whole thing has its own momentum and doesn't require any conspiracies to keep it going. Too many people actually believe this crap and they keep it going. It's a meme, really.

Furthermore, although now it's a Big Lie of a sorts, it really doesn't conform to the Big Lie model because the message was put out and the momentum gathered when the science was much, much more uncertain. We know now that there's no question about global warming—but when the foes first began fighting it, the science was much more tenuous.

I'm not sure that there's any other way to fight this particular kind of thing, where the long, hard process of science is involved, without simply having the general public be much more scientifically literate. If they were, then they'd be much more wiling to a) revise an earlier opinion that now is shown to be false, and, b) look at the preponderance of current data and see that the (big) question is largely closed. But they're not, science reporting is abysmal, and it's almost as subject to political spin as so many things less a matter of fact are.

Really, what do you expect, especially in the US, when evolution is still popularly considered to be a matter of opinion?
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:04 AM on September 5, 2006

I don't understand the final two sentences. Or, rather, whatever science has or has not proven about "conspiracies", you sound a little nutty.

Sorry EB--that was just meant to be a little joke.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:06 AM on September 5, 2006

Yes, A&L Daily is pretty unabashedly conservative and always has been. The fact that many of the posts there are about literature and art doesn't mean that that slant isn't evident even in those posts--consider the canon according to A&L and you'll consider a pretty limited canon.
posted by OmieWise at 10:06 AM on September 5, 2006

Listen to this week's episode of ABC's excellent Ockham's Razor for another Australian's take on global warming and climate change.
posted by bouvin at 10:12 AM on September 5, 2006

> ALdaily really sucks. It's gotten more and more aggressively political, with a tone that rankles
> and stories that seem chosen only to fit some preconceived idea. It's a shame, too, because
> it's the only site of its kind, so I still read it.

You might prefer politicaltheory.info, very much the same sort of site only leftward-leaning (and with a lot more links, so many it's hard to keep up.)
posted by jfuller at 10:17 AM on September 5, 2006

RealClimate weighs in..

In short, don't count your chickens till they have hatched. The report is not due till 2007 and the IPCC leaks are out of context and have errors.

"As usual the blogsphere is playing a key role in amplifying and further muddying the story. "
posted by stbalbach at 10:25 AM on September 5, 2006

"As usual the blogsphere is playing a key role in amplifying and further muddying the story. "

...And I guess The Australian isn't?
posted by saulgoodman at 10:29 AM on September 5, 2006

Dennis Dutton is down the hall from me and I hear him and other staff members arguing about global warming on a daily basis. He recently posted a graph in the hallway so all may see the plotted data points which prove that man couldn't be responsible global warming.
posted by arruns at 2:31 PM on September 5, 2006

Are there any good australian newspapers left?
posted by spazzm at 2:36 PM on September 5, 2006

The Sydney Morning Herald is a good Australian newspaper.

Murdoch is a naturalised American, and you're welcome to him.
posted by emf at 3:46 PM on September 5, 2006

As is The Age, but it and SMH are both owned by Fairfax.
posted by liquorice at 4:07 PM on September 5, 2006

...That's why their websites are fucking replicas of each other.
posted by liquorice at 4:08 PM on September 5, 2006

arruns, I'd like to see that graph. I'm also curious what Dutton thinks of these graphs.
posted by russilwvong at 5:16 PM on September 5, 2006

Either his guy can't even write or this is a new colloquial phrase to me... From the first link: The new projections put paid to some of the more alarmist scenarios ....
posted by uni verse at 8:44 PM on September 5, 2006

Put paid to. Everything2 says it's a British usage, though I could have sworn I'd heard it in US media.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 9:08 PM on September 5, 2006

"Is it just me, or are Australian online newspapers just sewers of disinformation?"
Nope, they are. The dead-tree versions are even worse.

"... has linked to an Australian one for any other purpose than to Left-bash."
Err... what? You do realise that The Australian is owned/run by News Ltd, right? And that it and its stablemates are considered to be right-wing Murdoch puppet rags by many Australians?

"The Age ... and SMH are both owned by Fairfax"
"...That's why their websites are fucking replicas of each other."
No more than the websites of every other major newspaper in Australia.

I live in Brisbane, possibly the most parochial city in the most parochial state in a parochial country. And I read the SMH & Age online because, despite their almost total blindness to things outside of Sydney and Melbourne, they still don't suck as much as the Murdoch papers!

Hell, you'd probably call me a Communist - but I buy the Australian Financial Review just so I can read a paper that doesn't suck...
posted by Pinback at 2:03 AM on September 6, 2006

V. interesting, Pinback, thanks. Just happened across this bit on Crooked Timber about Aussie papers.
posted by facetious at 5:07 PM on September 6, 2006

Is it just me or has Dennis Dutton largely abandoned skepticism in favour of simply being a contrarian? I haven't been around him for many years, but the last few years, each time I see mention of him, or read something he's written (which admittedly isn't often), it's been kind of feeble.

Does DD still have a significant role in A&LD these days? (I was under the vague impression he'd sold it and moved on to other things, but I really wouldn't know).
posted by -harlequin- at 8:28 PM on September 6, 2006