From: session@seq.uncwil.edu (Zack C. Sessions)
Subject: Re: Global Warming, again (was Re: Media bias)
Organization: Univ. of North Carolina @ Wilmington
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 22:13:31 GMT

jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:


>Zack, I'd like to hear your comments on the effect of the Urban Heat
>Island on the increase in temperatures measured at various stations
>throughout the world.  I don't have a reference, but a grad student
>was working on this when I was doing research at Cornell.  She was
>able to show that the increase in "urbanization" had a statistically
>significant effect on the temperatures measured at stations near the
>urban heat islands.

Proponents of Global Warming claim that urban heat islands are contributing
factors to the heating up of the earth. I would be interested to read
the report you cite. Was it ever published?

Also, the data I have quoted which was from the Unversity of East
Anglia, took the concept of heat islands into account and compensated
the data appropriately. It still showed an unexplained half degree C
increase over ther last 100 years. (See Sep 1989 Scientific American,
page 72, article by Dr. Stephen Schneider who is head of the National
Center for Atmospheric Research's interdisiplinary climate-systems
program)

>Presumably _Scientific American_ is being referred to rather than _Science_,
>which is not for laymen.  In both cases it is necessary to watch out.

I have read reports on Global Warming in both publications. And others.
And in scientific debate, I rarely cite from such publications as Time
or Newsweek.

>_Scientific American_ is a good magazine for laymen.  However, the
>editor, Jonathan Piel, has certain hobbies, and every issue contains
>an article that merits being called an editorial - something that
>supports one of Piel's rather conventional liberal ideas, e.g.
>Starwars can't work.

It is easy to tell which articles in SA are "editorial" and which are
scientific. They print a bio of the authors of each article, which is
also an indication of the author's technical knowledge and abilities.
Scientific American is toned down occasionally for the layman, but I
have read many articles which were way over my head, and contrary to
what you may think, I have a strong science background.

>_Science_ is excellent as a general scientific journal, but the News
>and Comment section is written by their stable of writers and not
>by scientists.  Every other issue has a letter protesting distortion
>in one of those articles.  They are about average for journalists in
>their views but used to be quite blatant in slanting their stories.
>The new editor, Daniel Koshland, seems to have them under somewhat
>better control than his predecessor.

Yes, the News and Comment section is written by staff writers for Science,
but I would tend to believe them. After all, they have their very own
immense body of reference material to tap into. And again, as you have
indicated, when there is some bias, letters are written and are apparently
published. The articles I have referred to are not biased very much at
all, and present well reseached information. If you question the information
presented, you shouldn't question Science, but the source of the information
itself.

And those articles I quoted which indicate the global temperature growth are
not the only articles on global warming which Science has published and I
have read. There have been numerous one over the past decade. And, just as
you'd imagine, not all of them agree with each other. But approximately
70% of them DO feel that global warming is happening.
-- 
Zack Sessions
sessions@seq.uncwil.edu
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
"Good health is merely the slowest form of dying."
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