Climate for Twitterers

In the past few weeks I've been using Twitter (Im a tweeter!!) in an attempt to get a feel for "social media marketing." I won't say I was a skeptic when I started, but I don't think I had any expectations other than being a researcher, not directly involved. I'm now rather more involved.


If you are on Twitter you can choose people to "follow." In fact when you first register, you'll be given a list of people you can follow. You can go to their profiles and determine if their interests and their past tweets are interesting to you. Every time they post a comment, you will receive it in your "NewsFeed." And your comments must be less than 140 characters.


If you want people to hear what you've got to say, you've got to have followers who will receive your tweets when you post them. Or you can search by topic or key word, and respond (retweet) to those messages, which will be received by the person you're responding to and whoever is following him/her.


I think I am most proud that Timothy Leary (@DrLeary) is a follower of my mine (from his location "On the outside looking in"). I'm pretty sure if you ask to follow him he'll follow you, too. If you want to follow me, I'm @WillBurd (as you'll see below).


The primary way I've used Twitter is to follow news aggregators, with particular reference to eco issues and insights into human behavior. When I find something interesting I retweet it (I now have three accounts with a total of 60 or so followers).


A few days ago I received a retweet that referenced an article from BBC News titled "What Happened to Global Warming?" that deals with temperature measurements and the fact that none of the the last 10 years reports higher temps that 1998, a marked El Nino year, which was indeed the hottest year in modern records. My tweet is below, and was meant to suggest that global temp measurements are selective at best, and there are other indicators, like ice caps and glaciers, that might tell an important part of the story. (My inter-tweet notes are notes in [brackets].)

WillBurd
8:25pm, Oct 14 from Tweetie

Melting glaciers & poles don't matter? RT@arthurtaubo: RT @eachus (Interesting article about global warming) http://twurl.nl/rh717o

A bit later I noticed that I had received a string of tweets (that 140 character limit) in response:

eachus
9:06pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd That's not the issue. 2 things here: (1) the globe has NOT been warmer since 1998. Yet... glaciers are melting. And yet again...

9:07pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd (2) The volume of ice of Antarctica is higher, even given meltings around the edges. What does this all mean? Frankly, who knows?

9:09pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd The question is not whether the earth is warming... despite peaks and valleys it has been trending warmer for at least 6000 yrs.

[About the same time human population and culture has been expanding exponentially. Ironic, no?]

9:11pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd The question is: is man (and in particular CO2) causing any warming? If so, you would expect it to be evident in recent years.

[As in the hottest decades of the last many centuries?]

9:12pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd But it HASN'T BEEN. Again: Antarctic deposits have been heavier than usual, so that despite edge melting, it has MORE ice.

[Proof, or citation?].

9:14pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Some glacier melting, like around Kilimanjaro (a favorite anecdote of "warmers"), is known to be actually caused by other factors.

[I'm not sure I've ever heard this suggested as proof. Cause for concern, yes.]

9:15pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd (Kilimanjaro melting was shown, years ago, to be due to deforestation at lower altitudes.)

[I think that IS human action, along with the burning of the wood releasing CO2.]

9:16pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd The upshot of it all is... nobody knows. The "greenhouse warming" theory has lots of BIG holes in it. Yet something is happening.

[I'm sorry, but this sounds a bit like Ed Grimley.]

9:16pm, Oct 14 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd But whether that something is overall warming is anything but clear.

I made the conscious decision to engage in this conversation because I sensed that eachus is open to arguments of fact and logic, and because I was willing to test my approach against a different one, even in a format not designed for nuanced discussion.

Limited by the format, I retweeted, focusing on the assertion that Antarctic ice mass was actually growing. I did a quick Google and retweeted the results, and a few minutes later another tweet that focused on what I think are the key issue--much of the anti-change argument focuses on responsibility, as in guilt of humans (see my earlier Blog), and climate is a chaotically complex, interconnected system that goes beyond any isolated indicator. 

WillBurd
12:24pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@eachus Googled Antarctic Ice Mass, got this study in "Science" that suggests losshttp://bit.ly/oOYqM

12:28pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@eachus Less about the "cause" of climate change than observed fact - on a systemic basis. Greenhouse gases one key variable.

eachus

2:42pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Perhaps. But there have been others that claim overall Antarctic gain. I am not surprised that there are conflicting claims.

[No evidence cited.]

2:44pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd No... it *IS* about cause. We know there is a trend upward anyway. If WE are causing some, then why isn't it getting warmer?

2:44pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd ... because it actually hasn't been, overall, for the last 10 years.

[Again no evidence cited, and a search of "global tempartatures 1998 - 2008" yields at best inconsistent evidence and disputes about appropriate statistical models.]

2:45pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Regardless of ice melts, and so on... the world, on average, was cooler last year than the year before.

2:46pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Which is a puzzle, but there it is. The greenhouse model still has some holes in it, too. Evidence for it is actually pretty thin.

2:47pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd When it comes to CO2, that is. We know that CFCs and so on eat ozone. Which has been healing nicely, by the way.

[Of course, CFCs have nothing to do with greenhouse gases, but do prove quite nicely that human activities affect global-scale phenomena, in both directions.]

2:48pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd I am not denying... just pointing out that it is not cut-and-dried. There are big questions. Even the basic ones aren't answered.

[Which ones?]

2:49pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Personally I would love it to be a bit warmer. Our last two winters here were a bit harsh.

2:51pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Record cold and snowfalls. I do understand that regional differences mean little. But still, some heat would be nice.
My next response tried to suggest, again, that complex systems are inherently non-linear and that if our planet is becoming less hospitable, for whatever reason, shouldn't we try to do something about it?

WillBurd

5:20pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@eachus Wiki on chaos: http://bit.ly/9ziZr - climate is complex, temp measurements limited -- systemic change undeniable - now what?

eachus

5:29pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

 @WillBurd I understand what you mean except: to what systemic changes do you refer? Known anthropocentric warming is not one of them. 
[Anthropogenic (eachus corrected it, below) warming is a possible input, not a systemic change.]

5:30pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Yes, we are seeing strange behavior in the weather. But neither do the changes match greenhouse warming theory, or any other.

[Even the article that started this whole chain doesn't claim that the general trend does not align with the model predictions.]

5:33pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd I am very familiar with chaotic systems, and I know how... well... chaotic they can be. But a theory must be proven...

[A misunderstanding, I think, of what a "theory" is in the scientific method, and perhaps a misunderstanding of a key aspect of chaotic systems -- complex interconnectedness.]

5:34pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd ... it is not enough to say, "Look! Lots of unpredicted things are happening, plus a bare few predicted things, therefore ..."

5:37pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Greenhouse warming today is on a par with "string theory": there are other hypotheses that explain observations equally as well. 
[A rhetorical metaphor, but climate change studies are dealing with observable phenomena, testable every day.]

5:39pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd Both are the "popular" theories (actually hypotheses). Those with other ideas tend to be ostracized, which is anti-science...[Again, science is about testing explanations--and discarding those that don't work to describe phenomena (and humans scientists can be as locked into their own world views as well as any one else--for the short term).]

5:43pm, Oct 15 from TweetDeck

@WillBurd I wrote "anthropocentric" rather than "anthropogenic". Haha. Well, it could be either... :0)

The upshot of all this is that as frustrating as this dialogue was in its form, it still was an opportunity to engage with someone outside my normal circle, someone who was paying some attention to what I was saying, even if in disagreement.

To the extent that eachus' s view of climate change represents the more rational-sounding of the critics, I gained an understanding of the need for us, all of us, to be absolutely clear about where we get our data. If we can build the discussion around that then we all have a chance to arrive at the optimal outcome (or at least the optimal process).

Where I've gotten to is that I am comfortable with the idea that I do not understand all the key issues or facts. It's all open to questioning and reappraisal (which is also key to the scientific method, when practiced). Certainty is not a part of this world view. Nor is lack of certainty, in itself, reason to discard a given view of the world, if the viewer is truly committed to SEEING THE WORLD AS IT REALLY IS.

At the same time, my reading of the data suggests that our limited understanding of these hugely complex forces, and our fascination with our own immediate comfort, may have already put in place a systematic change that will substantially reduce the "comfort zone" for the human race. As realist and cynic Kurt Vonnegut, said, "So it goes." And, perhaps, so will we go.