Evidence, internet and climate skeptics

This entry is a bit about my interest in responding to climate change skeptics, but maybe just as important, to look at how one can quickly check the authenticity of views, using internet tools.

The following is an extract from an article by Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist who writes an opinion column in the New York Times. In his article on Aug 1, he expressed some views about US politics and included the following:

"Martin Weitzman, a Harvard economist who has been driving much of the recent high-level debate, offers some sobering numbers. Surveying a wide range of climate models, he argues that, over all, they suggest about a 5 percent chance that world temperatures will eventually rise by more than 10 degrees Celsius (that is, world temperatures will rise by 18 degrees Fahrenheit). As Mr. Weitzman points out, that's enough to "effectively destroy planet Earth as we know it". It's sheer irresponsibility not to do whatever we can to eliminate that threat."

He went on to say that he believes that we should confront dogged skeptics about the human induced climate change as a moral issue, because the stakes are so high. If someone of good reputation told me that there is a 5% likelyhood that I will be killed on my next oversease trip then I would not go!

So the question is about reputation. Who is this chap Martin Weitzman, the economist. So I looked him up, and according to the Wikipedia, he is among the top 200 economists in the world. Who says so? Well, there is a site called RePec which lists an amazing catalogue of economist publications and ratings which produces a 'reputation' listing, and our Martin is currently 122nd! Professor Weitzman's biography is very impressive and he is currently recognised for his work on the economic impact of catastrophic climate change.

Conspiracy believers will not accept any of this evidence, but to a plain thinking person like me it is impressive. Of course this does not prove anything except that an academic of good reputation believes that the evidence for catastrophic climate change is about 5%.

The internet provides this type of evidence, or the lack of it, quite impressively. Students should be skilled in finding and assessing like this.

Tags: digital literacy
Posted at 09:03PM Aug 01, 2008 by John Travers  |