What A Coincidence! (Flatland Again)

In the five days after I posted "The Newsroom" Tackles Climate Change, that post came up first if you ran the Google query the newsroom + climate (with private results "off"). I ran that query again tonight to see who else is writing on the same subject.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a Grist post by Dave Roberts called Aaron Sorkin tackles climate change on “The Newsroom” and … oy (published today). Roberts' title sure does look a lot like the title I used five days ago.

What a coincidence!

And maybe it is a coincidence, although it would have been nearly impossible to not see the story I wrote if Roberts did some Google searches to see what others had said about the same subject. Doing related searches before you sit down to write is simply good journalistic practice.

On the other hand, no self-respecting environmental journalist saving the world over at grist.org would quote a socially marginal miscreant like me. I am invisible at grist.org

You will recall that I did some detailed fact-checking in my post. So I was interested when Roberts wrote the following:

OK, so, at the level of specific accuracy, this [video] actually holds up pretty well, as James West’s excellent fact-check shows. There’s some poetic license in the rhetoric, but the science is legit.

James West? Excellent fact check? Hmm...

So I clicked on the link and was not at all surprised to wind up at Mother Jones. Those of you who read Part III of Adventures In Flatland will immediately understand that people at Grist will naturally harmonize with people at Mother Jones and vice-versa (see below). I am also invisible at motherjones.com.

The "fact-check" article was by James West, who we are told is a "senior producer for the Climate Desk and a contributing producer for Mother Jones." You will recall that I investigated the sea level question in my post five days ago. Here's what West had to say about that:

VIDEO —The last time there was this much CO2 in the air, the oceans were 80 feet higher than they are now.

James West — Yup. That's what the science says. The last time the atmosphere clocked 400 ppm it was 3 million years ago—the "Mid-Pliocene"—when sea levels were as much as 80 feet higher than today (see this 2007 research paper authored by a group led by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University.) I'd probably add an "around" or "about" before the "80 feet higher" in the above statement; the studies leave a margin of error. But this statement checks out.

Pardon me, but that's not what the science says. Per the IPCC AR5 report, the scientific consensus says that "sea level was 15 to 20 meters above current levels in the middle/late Pliocene. The range is 49-66 feet. There is high confidence that sea level rise did not exceed 66 feet" (quoting myself).

In fact, the contributing scientists threw out the higher estimate West cites. In my post, I dug up Sorkin's likely source (see there for the details). I'm guessing Sorkin rounded down from 82 feet (25 meters) because "80 feet" sounds better on TV and "meters" is meaningless to an American audience.

James West says he would probably "add an 'around' or 'about' before the '80 feet higher' in the above statement." Go ahead and do that, James. So much for "excellent" fact checking

Another Flatland Lesson

Now, I did not go to this much trouble because I wasn't quoted by Grist or Mother Jones. And in this human world, this "crock of shit" to quote Kurt Vonnegut, being invisible has its benefits.

I want to talk about Flatland because all the people I discussed above live there.

Dave Roberts is outraged that Sorkin included that video segment. He actually becomes unhinged.

Even if we take the ranting EPA guy seriously, it makes no sense. What is a “catastrophic failure of the planet”? We’ve had deadly storms, heat waves, and wildfires for centuries. We’ll have more in coming decades. Lots of people have died from them throughout history; lots more will in coming decades. There is no line you cross where bad weather becomes a “failure of the planet,” such that we’ll be able to identify the first person to die from such a failure. It’s not going to be that dramatic. Making it sound like there’s going to be some sudden break only makes people blind to the incremental changes already underway. It makes them think climate change is something that might happen, something we might or might not avoid, rather than something that’s already underway and has to be managed.

Also: There’s nothing magic about a concentration of 400ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, or 2 degrees temperature rise, or any other particular milestone. The world won’t look any different the day after we cross those thresholds than it will the day before. We actually crossed 400ppm once already. (We’ve bounced back to just under.) Did you notice?

Saying that if we’d acted 20 years ago we could have avoided doom, but now there’s no way we’ll survive, is profoundly, profoundly daft, both substantively and psychologically. Yes, we could have done more, less expensively, if we’d started 20 years ago. By the same token, there’s more we can do, less expensively, today than there will be 20 years from now. A global average temperature rise of 3 degrees will be much uglier than 2 degrees; 4 degrees will be worse than 3; 5 worse than 4; and so on forever.

Sorry, Dave, but the paleoclimate proxy data say that we will eventually get at least 49-66 feet of sea level rise, and probably much more (see my original post). The word "eventually" likely means centuries in this case, but it's gonna happen. We are talking about the long-term climate sensitivity of the Earth.

You see, Roberts simply can't accept what the 'ranting EPA guy" said. He must ATTACK, ATTACK and ATTACK. He must UNDERMINE what the guy said. He must CLING to his instinctual HOPE. Etc.

He must tell us that 3°C of global warming is better than 4°C

And then there is Aaron Sorkin, who also can't accept the dialogue he wrote. I haven't seen the entire episode—I don't get HBO—but here's Roberts talking about it.

Nobody watching prime-time TV is going to absorb statistics or factoids. What they’ll take away from this is that some quirky government scientist thinks we’re doomed and that seasoned news professionals think he’s a quack. (They joke about it later in the episode.)

Notice the language—we've got a quirky government scientist who thinks we're doomed. The guy is obviously a quack who "seasoned news professionals" joke about later in the episode.

SEASONED NEWS PROFESSIONALS like Roberts and the cast of Sorkin's fictional newsroom must demonstrate that this quirky quack has NO CREDIBILITY. He must be DISMISSED. Etc.

The obvious point here is that Sorkin is just like Roberts. What they have in common is that they both live in Flatland, as described in those three long essays I wrote.

Here Endeth The Lesson.

P.S. — You know I don't make this stuff up. And living in a world as fucked-up as this one is definitely not my idea of a good time. I wish it were not so. But there it is.

And finally, I am able to post the video.

 

Comments

[dan blpom]

Decline! Great post. Agree all the way. Roberts is psychologically at this point in his hort life unable to face the reality of agw impact doomsdays in distant future. So pgh"psychologically he clings to hope. He is in denial. So ues he attacks. I am also invisib at grist and mj. Email me adap decilne i am in taiwan documenting all this on my @clificentral twitter feed. Email me we gotta talk danbloom at gmail