Just Not That Simple

Today I found myself listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car again. I don't know why. Often I enjoy the show although I rarely if ever agree with the substance. Most of the time I wind up thinking "well, ok, yes, except it just isn't that simple." I hope, but I am pessimistic that the rest of the audience hears it like that too. This is a perfect example.

On todays show at one point he started reading an alphabetical list of things that have been attributed to global warming. He found this guy who has a website with links to over 600 individual things that have at one time or another been "blamed" on global warming.

Right off he presents it as if the sheer volume of things being discussed should indicate that the idea is just being treated as a catch-all for anything anyone sees going wrong - and therefore isn't as significant as it might be. Alternately you are lead to believe that "advocates" of global warming theory are so anxious to validate the idea that they will put it forth as a reason for almost anything.

I have to say that if something as fundamental as the average temperature of our planet was changing I would have no trouble at all believing that as many as 600 million individual things would change. The planetary ecosystem is mindbogglingly complicated and interdependent. We've only found 600 things to attribute to global warming? I don't think we're looking hard enough. To say that 600 individual items is some kind of hysteria is ignorant.

I guess the second bit could be true, except it doesn't need to be. Really I don't think there are global warming advocates. There are legit scientists, there are political and industry naysayers, and then there are many of us trying to beat back the latter. Proponents don't need to make a case, they have the science.

But this is just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg - so to speak (that's actually very Rush-like. I wonder if he's used it).

Really why he was reading it was so he could recite many items that sounded obviously contradictory: "Ocean salinity decreasing" followed by "Ocean salinity increasing" and the like. This is supposed to make us think that if the hysterical Goreian troops are including things on both sides of an outcome that the underlying idea must in fact be false - because the argument is ridiculous. "Avalanches reduced, Avalanches increased." How is it possible that global warming is causing avalanches to both increase and decrease? They must be nuts! "Bananas destroyed, bananas grow." Come on Algore, you can't have it both ways!

Poppycock. Facile. Ignorant.

How could it be both? Perhaps, Rush, the Earth is large. Just a guess.

Maybe in some places, under some circumstances in some models the ocean salinity is increasing where in others it is decreasing - and maybe in both cases it is due to global climate change.

And herein really is the problem, and it isn't confined to Rush Limbaugh but really exists in most media short of PBS (and I would also say applies to social issues as well to natural science). Media today doesn't do anything. Mostly they reference other media and then talk about it, most times without reading it, never after having vetted it, and never with enough time or civility for any nuance. It's not enough to read a list of article subjects and expect that it makes an informed statement about a complicated subject. In this case, it wouldn't likely even be enough to read each of the actual articles as they were news and commentary, not publications in science journals. You cannot discuss and you really cannot debate something as complicated as global climate change in sound bites, let alone second hand referencing of sound bites. First off, not everyone who produces a sound bite is informed. Statements have to be checked, just repeating them often doesn't make them right, just familiar. And second, even if the source material is good, the subject is just too complex for a "rant."

Why is this what we get? Unfortunately I think its because its what we want. Programming outlets program what is popular. Rush Limbaugh's brand of discourse is staggeringly popular. "Nova" and "Frontline" don't compete - even if they are obviously more reputable on the facts. People would rather listen to a 5 minute Limbaugh rant about how libs are unfairly stigmatizing "Intelligent Design" rather than watch a two hour exhaustive Nova episode about how Christian Fundamentalists are manufacturing it in order to circumvent court rulings and how a George W. Bush appointed judge ruled it just isn't science at all. Sad, but true.

But then I just did a 5 minute rant about the complexity of issues. Would you watch the Frontline if they made it?