My favorite Sunday program is a radio show called “On the Media” (“www.onthemedia.org”:http://onthemedia.org/). It’s a week-by-week look at the media and its behavior. “This week’s show takes a look at media and global warming”:http://onthemedia.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm051906d.mp3. My favorite quote from this piece is a look at a media spot put together by an industry group. Paraphrased, it claims that Greenland’s icecaps are actually growing, and that scientists don’t tell you that. It also claims that carbon dioxide has been vilified by scientists, even though humans produce it as a by-product of breathing and plants need it to live. It’s a finger-wagging piece that proclaims to speak from knowledge, while demonizing scientists.
One of the hosts then says to her guest (with a smile on her face, it is clear) after the clip plays, “Why do you hate kids and plants?”. I was struck by this quote, and had a good chuckle. However, it also occurred to me that this kind of industry piece is the same subversive (and baseless) tactic that agencies like “The Discovery Institute” use when trying to make evolution look bad, bad enough that people just accept their own hypothesis of “intelligent design” without actual reference to research or data.
This clip from the industry group also tickled some of my Carl Sagan “baloney detectors”, a “series of guidelines”:http://www.jonathanknowles.com/balony.html to help people detect B.S. when claims about science are made. The big one that dinged was “Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses)”. That is, sure CO2 is produced when we (and kids) breathe, and sure, plants need CO2 to survive. However, as the host of “On the Media” and her guest pointed out, let’s stick to the point: in proper concentrations, CO2 is absolutely necessary for life, but humans have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last century. Nobody from industry argues against the reality, because that’s backed up by multiple, independent data sources and data is what it is.
This tactic, observational selection, tries to distract the listener with reasonable statements while avoiding the unavoidable fact that humans are raising CO2 to poisonous levels. Water is also necessary for life, but nobody can dispute the fact that ingesting too much of it leads to the lethal condition hyponatremia [TAOMPH32].
.. [TAOMPH32] http://steve.cooleysekula.net/blog/?p=867
