politically-influenced shrinkage factors

When scientists with an atheistic bent argue with fundamentalists about whether God did or did not have a hand in the manifestations of life on this planet, the trickiest aspect of the debate is that it concerns an entity that does not reveal himself directly enough to be weighed or photographed.

But the other great science-related debate of our times concerns physical quantities that can be measured, such as whether there has been any change in the extent of sea ice over the last few decades. Given the accuracy with which these quantities can be measured, the facts should be the same, whether they are perceived by left-wing "let's intervene and fix it" types or laissez-faire right-wing types.

Earlier this month, conservative columnist George F. Will let rip with some skeptical opinions concerning global warming. This included a claim that the sea ice extent has rebounded to 1979 levels. But the research group he was supposedly quoting in fact claims that the arctic sea ice is down 8% compared to the same time of the year in 1979, as visualized here.

Now my point is not in fact to criticize anyone who honestly doubts whether humans are dramatically affecting the climate on this planet. My point is that the debate should be focused on the interpretation of the facts, which is quite a tricky business, not the facts themselves, most of which are pretty hard to dispute. Once humanity figured out how to get satellites up, measuring the extent of sea ice is frankly not rocket science. And for a newspaper of the supposed quality of the Washington Post, checking a simple fact like this is a whole lot easier than checking whether Deep Throat was telling the truth during their award-winning reporting of the Watergate scandal back in the 70s!

Of course the proposed solutions to an acknowledged problem will likely be different according to one's political stripe; that's as it should be and is what makes democracy so much fun. Of course this sets up a bias in how believing or skeptical one is concerning a certain interpretation of the facts, which is regrettable but is hard to avoid. But in a "climate" (groan!) of intelligent debate, it should be in neither side's interest to cherry-pick or distort the facts, because by doing so they ought to lose credibility.

I actually only got around to seeing Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" last weekend. I found it quite persuasive and Gore appears to have a lot of facts at his disposal, probably a lot more than someone like George F. Will. Well I would hope he does, since he is devoting so much of his time and energy to the climate change issue. It occurred to me that, impressive as his rhetorical analogies are, and sincere and extremely well educated about the data as I believe him to be, his one-man show ends up further polarizing the debate - at least in the US - precisely because he can be labeled as anti-Republican.

In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote (by a 0.27% margin) but Bush won the all-important electoral vote with a confused counting of the Florida vote where he won by a controversial 0.01% margin. Because this margin was so slim, the facts themselves were subject to debate - whether the votes had been accurately counted in Florida. Compared to these numbers, an 8% decrease in sea ice is huge. In the global warming debate, the facts are the easy part.