Articles by Andrew Dessler

Delayers are replacing deniers

There's been some hand wringing about the fact that science does not have the traction it should in the political debate over climate change.

This is the genesis of the framing argument, most recently pushed by Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet. Basically, this thesis says that scientists need to put their scientific results into a "frame" that allows the general public to better understand how to interpret their results.

I've never particularly liked "framing," and here's one reason: I think that the scientific community has been extremely effective at getting the word out about climate change.

Look at this article:

Brit judge claims to find errors in Gore movie

This just in from Fox News:

A High Court judge in London has turned film critic, highlighting "nine scientific errors" in Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The judge said some of the errors had arisen in "the context of alarmism and exaggeration" to support the former US vice-president's thesis on global warming.

The Government's decision to show the film in secondary schools had come under attack from father-of-two Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of political group The New Party, who accused the Government of "brainwashing" children with propaganda.

Justice Burton ruled at London's High Court that the film, much acclaimed by environmentalists, could be shown in schools as part of a climate change resource pack, but only if it was accompanied by new guidance notes to balance Gore's "one-sided" views.

Here's my take on this: there is no question that there are a few statements in Gore's movie that make me flinch. Had he run the script by me, I would have suggested he rephrase a few of his points.

What the ozone hole tells us about the science of climate change

The atmospheric sciences community is excitedly discussing new results that potentially cast doubt on our understanding of the chemistry of the Antarctic ozone hole. The ozone hole is formed when two molecules of chlorine monoxide react with each other to form what is known as the chlorine dimer, ClOOCl, and that molecule is subsequently blasted apart by sunlight to release the chlorine atoms. New results suggest that this reaction is actually much slower than previously suggested. If this is true, it suggests that there is some important chemical process destroying ozone in the Antarctic stratosphere that we do not know about.

In reaction to this unexpected scientific result, stratospheric chemists are attacking the problem, trying to think up potential mechanisms that reconcile these new measurements with everything else we know about the chemistry of the stratosphere. As a former stratospheric chemist, I can say that I have not seen this level of excitement in the stratospheric chemistry community in at least 10 or 15 years.

So what does this tell us about the science of climate change? It tells us that many of the criticisms of climate science coming from the skeptics are dead wrong.

How climate skeptics like Fred Singer operate

Several posts ago, I reproduced a few emails to and from well-known climate skeptic Fred Singer.

Since then, I've had a few other exchanges emailed to me. They give great insight into how skeptics work the system to promote their view.

Here's the best one: