"Climate change is accelerating beyond expectations"; while Americans' belief in AGW declines

Euphonious_Polemic · December 9, 2009, 4:44am

That’s because Hannity’s comment was a blatant, willful lie.

Blake · December 9, 2009, 4:56am

Yes, my guy’s a freedom fighter. Your guy’s a terrorist.

SenorBeef · December 9, 2009, 5:31am

And if your side needs to resort to lies to make a case, what are the odds that they are right?

(I say that as someone undecided on the issue - but leaning towards the AGW consensus because while both sides give me the bullshit vibe, it’s much stronger and filled with self interest in the deial camp).

Euphonious_Polemic · December 9, 2009, 6:05am

THANK YOU SenorBeef.

You give me hope.

Fuzzy_Dunlop · December 9, 2009, 1:30pm

The problem is, as I’m sure you know, lots of people are going to believe Hannity. I don’t think it’s even fair to blame his listeners. It’s confusing and esoteric stuff and people are too busy with picking their kids up after school and every day stuff to do primary research. That’s why we really need popular television and radio hosts to not outright and deliberately lie to people.

Did anyone else read Sarah Palin’s op-ed in the Washington Post today?

Think of how many people are going to read that and take it as the final word on what those leaked e-mails say. It’s really no wonder more and more Americans are becoming convinced AGW isn’t real. They’re being lied to by the only people they listen to.

The_Other_Waldo_Pepper · December 9, 2009, 2:41pm

Did anyone else read Sarah Palin’s op-ed in the Washington Post today?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...803402_pf.html

Sarah Palin:

The e-mails reveal that leading climate “experts” deliberately destroyed records, manipulated data to “hide the decline” in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. What’s more, the documents show that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd. Some scientists had strong doubts about the accuracy of estimates of temperatures from centuries ago, estimates used to back claims that more recent temperatures are rising at an alarming rate.

Think of how many people are going to read that and take it as the final word on what those leaked e-mails say. It’s really no wonder more and more Americans are becoming convinced AGW isn’t real. They’re being lied to by the only people they listen to.

The problem is, those e-mails do reveal that leading climate experts deliberately destroyed records. And those experts did discuss how the “fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t” sure as “hide the decline” is a direct quote likewise, and the bit about preventing critics from publishing in peer-reviewed journals is likewise dead on, which really does reflect on the actual degree of consensus, sure as “some scientists” did have those strong doubts.

The problem isn’t that she’s lying to people; it’s that each statement is true, but she’s not mentioning additional true information. It’s like mentioning that TITANIC grossed more at the box office than JAWS by showing figures that aren’t adjusted for inflation, which makes it look like a one-sided blowout.

WarmNPrickly · December 9, 2009, 4:34pm

Without context, I don’t think you can definitively say that those e-mails demonstrate anything. I certainly don’t see any indication that they deliberately destroyed records. I don’t know anything about blocking publications, but if the reviewers advice on publication is being blatantly ignored, it is hard to decide which side is circumventing the review process.

elfkin477 · December 9, 2009, 5:17pm

What was the beginning of his comment? Did it specify where, like in the US perhaps? It definitely wasn’t warmer where I am from January-October according to the national weather service. In fact, only the three months out of the past 9 that exceeded the averages were even as warm as the average for those months.

Jan. -5.8
Feb. 1.1
Mar. -0.4
Apr. 2.6
May -0.4
Jun. -2.0
Jul. -3.5
Aug 1.0
Sep. -1.8
Oct. -2.4

I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of areas gave similar (-1.2 degrees below average for that nine month period) in various spots in the US too. Now, I don’t expect the truth from Hannity or Gore, but the shortened quote makes me wonder what they left out.

Fuzzy_Dunlop · December 9, 2009, 7:49pm

From Media Matters: http://mediamatters.org/research/200911250020

Sean Hannity:

November 10: “This is one of the coldest years on record, ladies and gentlemen.” Hannity stated during the November 10 edition of his Fox News program, “Here’s what I don’t understand. This is one of the coldest years on record, ladies and gentlemen. There is no – I don’t believe climate change is real. I think this is global warming hysteria and alarmism.”

November 18: “Senator, this is the coldest year on record … or one of them.” Hannity stated during a November 18 radio interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), “[W]hat I’m afraid of is I think you’re going to be used by the Democrats. ‘Well, even Lindsey Graham agrees that global warming is real.’ We’re – Senator, this is the coldest year on record … or one of them.”

November 24: “You can also look it up, this is one of the coldest years in history, this past year.” During the November 24 edition of his radio show, Hannity told a caller who said he “can’t wait” to confront “a liberal aunt and uncle” with “some facts” on global warming: “I tell you what, I have a special bit of information for you. At the top of the next hour, we’re going to expose the global warming hoax and how they have purposefully been misguiding people on this issue of man-made global warming. You can also look it up, this is one of the coldest years in history, this past year.”

So he was clearly talking about GLOBAL temperatures and was lying.

GIGObuster · December 9, 2009, 8:56pm

The_Other_Waldo_Pepper:

The problem is, those e-mails do reveal that leading climate experts deliberately destroyed records. And those experts did discuss how the “fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t” sure as “hide the decline” is a direct quote likewise, and the bit about preventing critics from publishing in peer-reviewed journals is likewise dead on, which really does reflect on the actual degree of consensus, sure as “some scientists” did have those strong doubts.

The problem isn’t that she’s lying to people; it’s that each statement is true, but she’s not mentioning additional true information. It’s like mentioning that TITANIC grossed more at the box office than JAWS by showing figures that aren’t adjusted for inflation, which makes it look like a one-sided blowout.

None of your "Did"s are supported with facts or are the whole truth.

Palin is not telling the truth.

The_Other_Waldo_Pepper · December 9, 2009, 9:06pm

Yes, I know. That’s why – in the section you just quoted – I wrote that “each statement is true, but she’s not mentioning additional true information.” If you need to swap in “the whole truth” for “mentioning additional true information”, then be my guest: ‘she’s not mentioning the whole truth’. If some third phrasing strikes you as preferable, swap that in likewise.

GIGObuster · December 9, 2009, 9:08pm

More about Palin not telling the truth over here:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/08/climategate-washington-post-sarah-palin-science-hide-the-decline/

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html

GIGObuster · December 9, 2009, 9:11pm

Nope, not even that, each statement by Palin was doubtful at best. A lie at worst.

The_Other_Waldo_Pepper · December 9, 2009, 9:19pm

Again, I don’t care ***which *** synonymous term you want to ride; if you want to dub them as “doubtful” instead of saying each one isn’t “the whole truth”, that’s fine too.

Now, if you want to really stand on that “a lie at worst” claim,*** then,*** sure, I’d take issue – but so long as you’re prefacing it with an “each statement by Palin was doubtful at best”, there’s no point in debating the more extravagant claim; you’re already backing away from it before you make it.

GIGObuster · December 9, 2009, 9:40pm

Meh, it looks like just nitpicking statements, after knowing that good sources are available to see if the information she is parroting is the truth, one has to realize that she is just lying.

The_Other_Waldo_Pepper · December 9, 2009, 9:52pm

No, she’s not. When she writes that the climate experts tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals, she’s quite literally correct. When she writes that some scientists did have strong doubts, she’s quite literally correct. It’s not the whole truth, and you can nitpick her statements for not mentioning additional information, but I don’t see that it rises to the level of lying.

flickster · December 9, 2009, 11:05pm

Care to start applying the same standard to Al Gore or Obama’s speeches?

GIGObuster · December 9, 2009, 11:23pm

Nope, no one has the absolute right to publish bad papers or avoid competent reviews.

http://mediamatters.org/mobile/research/200912090011

CLAIM: Scientists “tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals”

REALITY: Mann’s email cited specific paper that Climate Research editors and publisher conceded should not have been published. Although Palin does not cite specific emails to support her claim, critics have frequently pointed to a March 11, 2003, email in which Mann wrote that a paper by astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas “couldn’t have cleared a ‘legitimate’ peer review process anywhere. That leaves only one possibility – that the peer-review process at Climate Research has been hijacked by a few skeptics on the editorial board.” Mann further stated, “I think we have to stop considering ‘Climate Research’ as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…” Contrary to Palin’s suggestion that Mann targeted the journal because it published work of his “critics,” The Washington Post itself previously reported that the email suggested a boycott of Climate Research “because it had agreed to publish a paper they viewed as flawed.” Indeed, The New York Times reported on August 5, 2003, that the Soon-Baliunas paper “has been heavily criticized by many scientists, including several of the journal editors. The editors said last week that whether or not the conclusions were correct, the analysis was deeply flawed.” The Times further noted that the “publisher of the journal, Dr. Otto Kinne, and an editor who recently became editor in chief, Dr. Hans von Storch, both said that in retrospect the paper should not have been published as written” and that von Storch resigned, “saying he disagreed with the peer-review policies”:
Advocates for cuts in emissions and scientists who hold the prevailing view on warming said the hearing backfired. It proved more convincingly, they said, that the skeptical scientists were a fringe element that had to rely increasingly on industry money and peripheral scientific journals to promote their work.

The hearing featured Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a co-author of a study, with Dr. Sallie Baliunas, also an astrophysicist at the center, that said the 20th-century warming trend was unremarkable compared with other climate shifts over the last 1,000 years.

But the Soon-Baliunas paper, published in the journal Climate Research this year, has been heavily criticized by many scientists, including several of the journal editors. The editors said last week that whether or not the conclusions were correct, the analysis was deeply flawed.

The publisher of the journal, Dr. Otto Kinne, and an editor who recently became editor in chief, Dr. Hans von Storch, both said that in retrospect the paper should not have been published as written. Dr. Kinne defended the journal and its process of peer review, but distanced himself from the paper.

"I have not stood behind the paper by Soon and Baliunas," he wrote in an e-mail message. "Indeed: the reviewers failed to detect methodological flaws."

Dr. von Storch, who was not involved in overseeing the paper, resigned last week, saying he disagreed with the peer-review policies.

The Senate hearing also focused new scrutiny on Dr. Soon and Dr. Baliunas's and ties to advocacy groups. The scientists also receive income as senior scientists for the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington group that has long fought limits on gas emissions. The study in Climate Research was in part underwritten by $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, the voice of the oil industry.
Mann: “I support the publication of ‘skeptical’ papers that meet the basic standards of scientific quality and merit.” In response to the controversy surrounding the emails, Mann said that his email "[w]as in response to a very specific incident regarding a paper by Soon and Baliunas published in the journal ‘Climate Research.’ " Mann further stated: “I support the publication of ‘skeptical’ papers that meet the basic standards of scientific quality and merit. I myself have published scientific work that has been considered by some as representing a skeptical point of view on matters relating to climate change.”

Nitpick? That was clearly a lie when the context is known, the email contrarians point as the one showing “that there was no real consensus even within the CRU crowd” is the one from Trenberth:

http://mediamatters.org/research/200911230052

Wired reports Trenberth’s response to leaked email: “**loggers are missing the point he’s making in the e-mail by not reading the article cited in it.” Wired’s Threat Level blog reported on Trenberth’s response to the leaked email:

But Trenberth, who acknowledged the e-mail is genuine, says bloggers are missing the point he's making in the e-mail by not reading the article cited in it. That article - An Imperative for Climate Change Planning (.pdf) - actually says that global warming is continuing, despite random temperature variations that would seem to suggest otherwise.

"It says we don't have an observing system adequate to track it, but there are all other kinds of signs aside from global mean temperatures - including melting of Arctic sea ice and rising sea levels and a lot of other indicators - that global warming is continuing," he says.

RealClimate.org on Trenberth’s email: “You need to read his recent paper” for context. A November 23 blog post on RealClimate.org, purporting to “shed some light on some of the context which is missing in some of the discussion of various emails”, said of Trenberth’s email:

You need to read his recent paper on quantifying the current changes in the Earth's energy budget to realise why he is concerned about our inability currently to track small year-to-year variations in the radiative fluxes.

Trenberth email cited “my own article on where the heck is global warming?” in stating that “Our observing system is adequate” to identify current warming. Trenberth’s October 12, 2009, email, which Beck quoted, reads:

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming ? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low.

This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)
***

The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.***

Trenberth article indeed referred to what he called an “incomplete explanation” of short-term climate variations, and maintained that “global warming is unequivocally happening.” In the article to which Trenberth referred in Wired, “An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy,” he wrote:

The global mean temperature in 2008 was the lowest since about 2000 (Fig. 1). Given that there is continual heating of the planet, referred to as radiative forcing, by accelerating increases of carbon dioxide (Fig. 1) and other greenhouses due to human activities, why isn't the temperature continuing to go up? The stock answer is that natural variability plays a key role and there was a major La Niña event early in 2008 that led to the month of January having the lowest anomaly in global temperature since 2000. While this is true, it is an incomplete explanation.

[...]

Given that global warming is unequivocally happening and there has so far been a failure to outline, let alone implement, global plans to mitigate the warming, then adapting to the climate change is an imperative. We will of course adapt to climate change. The question is the extent to which the adaptation is planned and orderly with minimal disruption and loss of life, or whether it is unplanned? To plan for and cope with effects of climate change requires information on what is happening and why, whether observed changes are likely to continue or are a transient, how they affect regional climates and the possible impacts. Further, to the extent that the global community is able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the climate change, then information is required on how effective it is. This article addresses vital information needs to help understand climate change.

It is not a sufficient explanation to say that a cool year is due to natural variability. Similarly, common arguments of skeptics that the late 20th century warming is a recovery from the Little Ice Age or has other natural origins are inadequate as they do not provide the physical mechanisms involved. There must be a physical explanation, whether natural or anthropogenic. If surface warming occurs while the deep ocean becomes cooler, then we should be able to see the evidence. It may be that there is insufficient data to prove one way or the other, as is often the case in the deep past. However, since 1979 there have been instruments in space tracking the total solar irradiance (TSI)3,4, and so we know it is not the sun that has brought about warming in the past 30 years5. Hence a key issue is the extent to which we can track energy in the climate system.

GIGObuster · December 9, 2009, 11:34pm

Like if that is a mighty challenge, Gore has been caught by a science reporter and former geologist with several exaggerations:

Unfortunately the deniers came not with sensible rebuttals like him, but with complete lying swindle movies.

The same science reporter has concluded also that “Climate gate” is hooey.

The_Other_Waldo_Pepper · December 9, 2009, 11:40pm

That’s not what was being asserted.

It is, in fact, 100% irrelevant to what was being asserted.

Palin’s claim is that the climate experts tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals; whether that statement is true or false has nothing to do with your response. It’s entirely possible to maintain both that no one has the absolute right to publish bad papers and that the climate experts tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

The former doesn’t make the latter a lie. The former has nothing to do with the truth of the latter.

Again, the question is whether her statement was true or false – and I don’t see that Palin limited her comments to Trenberth.

Topic		Replies	Views
Global Warming Redux: Have they lost their credibility? Great Debates	206	24063	February 23, 2010
Is Global Warming science? Great Debates	72	12283	November 26, 2009
The Evidence Against Global Warming? READ BEFORE FLAMING! Great Debates	120	10017	March 25, 2009
What's all this talk about "Global Warming?" Great Debates	108	10686	December 5, 2009
No global warming since 1850? Great Debates	9	3461	February 10, 2010

"Climate change is accelerating beyond expectations"; while Americans' belief in AGW declines

Related topics