Global Warming, Snow and Mistaking Data for Trends

A few years back, a good friend of mine told me that people “know” that global warming is real because of their personal experiences. He wanted to start the introduction to a book with a series of personal experiences of people who observed things getting warming.

Sometimes a story captivates the imagination. A story can convince people of something because of the personal touch.

Now my neighbors are telling me that their personal experiences prove that global warming thing is bunk. We have just reached a record seasonal snowfall combined with an extremely cold winter. The personal story makes it clear that the world is getting colder. “How long did it take you to dig out from global warming?”

A story can be convincing. Human experience can’t be wrong, and it is easier to understand the phenomenon of snow (especially after hours and hours of shoveling!) than some complex mathematics.

The bottom line is that when trying to understand a complex system, one set of data is not going to provide enough information to draw conclusions. A more comprehensive picture of the situation is needed, and even then it might not be enough.

It’s not only true for climate change. It also applies to every decision we make. When we are trying to decide if product A or product B is the more sustainable choice, we cannot rely on personal stories. We need something more comprehensive that provides an unbiased perspective and accounts for things that are complicated.

Again we turn to life cycle analysis as one tool to help us make sense out of complex situations. When you begin an LCA, you start by considering a wide range of inputs to the problem. You look at beginnings, middles and ends. Then numbers are applied to these to try to tease out the truth as best we can.

Stories are nice – people enjoy stories. However many stories are incorrect or deceptive. If the goal is honesty and truth, then we need to avoid stories and look at data.

We need to push ourselves and the media to make more intelligent and probing analyses, even if there isn’t a fun story to go along. Accurate data and defensible models are what lead to truth.