# Coal company CEO to sue EPA over global warming lying **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 10, 2014, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515 "2014-06-10T23:52:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![barfridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9de053/32.png) [@barfridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barfridge)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/41 "2015-06-14T03:36:50Z")
sorry to seem disinclined to accept your “facts” GIGO, but the recent data from the poles says otherwise. Antarctic sea ice is at all time record spread. The arctic has undergone seasonal exchanges as always and has bounced back directly contrary to the dire IPPC and other predictions so gloomily announced by the free press. It seems the press in general, particularly the leftist ones, have paid loose and short with the facts in order to serve the readers with what they appear to believe and want more of. Gloom and doom. What a shambles. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/42 "2015-06-14T03:46:12Z")
> [@barfridge](#): > > sorry to seem disinclined to accept your “facts” GIGO, but the recent data from the poles says otherwise. Please tell me that you know the difference between\*\* cap ice \*\*and **volume** with ice over water and spread. Otherwise you are only telling all that I know better than a scientist. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/43 "2015-06-14T03:55:06Z")
And even the “bouncing back” idea is a big fail. > **[Arctic Sea Ice Escalator](https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=64)** > > Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed naturally in the past' or 'other planets are warming too' are examined to see what the science... > [@](#): > > September Arctic sea ice extent data since 1980 from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (blue diamonds). “Recovery” years, meaning years when the sea ice extent is greater than the previous year, are highlighted in red to mock the repeated cynical claims of climate change “skeptics” that global warming has somehow stopped. Many factors affect the annual summer decrease in Arctic sea ice extent, and it is illogical at best to claim any “trend” by cherry-picking only brief periods of data. The obvious true long-term trend in Arctic sea ice extent (red second-order polynomial curve fit) is that it is declining at an accelerating rate. ---
**Author:** ![barfridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9de053/32.png) [@barfridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barfridge)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/44 "2015-06-14T03:55:51Z")
the best way to see the recent changes ( last twenty years ) to ice caps is by appreciation of the earth’s orbit in relation to the sun. As precessional wobbles occur over cycles of decades and longer, the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun allows sunlight to heat the northern hemisphere for longer. Recent concerns about northern hemispheric polar ice, particularly when offered by a biased press, fail to appreciate this and more worrying, fail to acknowledge that while minor losses occur at the north pole, substantial increases in ice have occurred in the south. This kind of cherry picking is common in the leftist and warmist press. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/45 "2015-06-14T04:10:45Z")
> [@barfridge](#): > > the best way to see the recent changes ( last twenty years ) to ice caps is by appreciation of the earth’s orbit in relation to the sun. As precessional wobbles occur over cycles of decades and longer, the tilt of the earth in relation to the sun allows sunlight to heat the northern hemisphere for longer. > Recent concerns about northern hemispheric polar ice, particularly when offered by a biased press, fail to appreciate this and more worrying, fail to acknowledge that while minor losses occur at the north pole, substantial increases in ice have occurred in the south. This kind of cherry picking is common in the leftist and warmist press. Nope, the press is mostly in the habit to not reporting things properly, in this subject what the corporation say is that it should be avoided most of the time. And it is clear that for a scientist you are not showing here the habit to check the reports from the scientists on the field. This only shows that you are only relying on misinformation. There were more than a few new reports on the loss of ice being observed also in the Antarctic. > **[Eric Rignot on “the Holy Shit Moment”](https://thinc.blog/2014/05/19/eric-rignot-on-the-holy-shit-moment/)** > > Eric Rignot gives some more background on last week’s “holy shit moment” – his new paper on accelerated melt of the Antarctic ice sheet  – and adds some new holy shit … > [@](#): > > We announced that we had collected enough observations to conclude that the retreat of ice in the Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica was unstoppable, with major consequences – it will mean that sea levels will rise one metre worldwide. What’s more, its disappearance will likely trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which comes with a sea level rise of between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide. > > Two centuries – if that is what it takes – may seem like a long time, but there is no red button to stop this process. Reversing the climate system to what it was in the 1970s seems unlikely; we can barely get a grip on emissions that have tripled since the Kyoto protocol, which was designed to hit reduction targets. Slowing down climate warming remains a good idea, however – the Antarctic system will at least take longer to get to this point. > [@](#): > > Thwaites glacier started to accelerate after 2006 and in 2011 we detected a huge retreat of the glacier grounding lines since 2000. Detailed reconstructions of the glacier bed further confirmed that no mountain or hill in the back of these glaciers could act as a barrier and hold them up; and 40 years of glacier flow evolution showed that the speed-up was a long story. > > All these results indicate a progressive collapse of this area. At the current rate, a large fraction of the basin will be gone in 200 years, but recent modelling studies indicate that the retreat rate will increase in the future. How did this happen? A clue is that all the glaciers reacted at the same time, which suggested a common force that can only be the ocean. Ocean heat is pushed by the westerly winds and the westerlies have changed around Antarctica in response to climate warming and the depletion of the ozone. The stronger winds are caused by a world warming faster than a cooling Antarctica. Stronger westerlies push more subsurface warm waters poleward to melt the glaciers, and push surface waters northward. > > Nerilie Abram and others have just confirmed that the westerlies are stronger now than at any other time in the past 1,000 years and their strengthening has been particularly prominent since the 1970s as a result of human-induced climate warming. Model predictions also show that the trend will continue in a warming climate. > > What this means is that we may be ultimately responsible for triggering the fast retreat of West Antarctica. This part of the continent was likely to retreat anyway, but we probably pushed it there faster. It remains difficult to put a timescale on it, because the computer models are not good enough yet, but it could be within a couple of centuries, as I noted. There is also a bigger picture than West Antarctica. The Amundsen sea sector is not the only vulnerable part of the continent. East Antarctica includes marine-based sectors that hold more ice. One of them, Totten glacier, holds the equivalent of seven metres of global sea level. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/46 "2015-06-14T04:23:27Z")
> [@barfridge](#): > > Actually XT, there has not been any convincing evidence that increased co2 has been the cause of step increases in global temp ( the last one ceased in the late 90s), rather, plenty of strong reasons to doubt this. If you have an interest in the science , there are good sites with credible and very thorough considerations of the history and details of this fascinating subject. Anthony Watts is just one of many. > Science is not done by vote, or consensus, neither is the relentless pursuit of facts in any way improved by belief one way or another. I maintain that anyone who argues that the climate science cagw story is in any way “settled” just doesn’t understand science. > Cheers So it’s a good idea to dump CO2 into the atmosphere all we want, forever. You believe there is **zero** cost. To me, that sounds like a self-serving lie on the behalf of the energy companies. CO2 is obviously less toxic a pollutant than many other things, but venting it into the atmosphere is essentially using the air we all collectively share as a waste dump. It shouldn’t be free to do that. Perhaps you’d have a case that the damage done by CO2 release is so negligible that energy companies should pay essentially nothing for the privilege of dumping. Well, ok. But, since their actions **are negative** (there’s no credible evidence that the CO2 release is a good thing), at a minimum, all of the government subsidies towards those same energy companies should be zeroed out. Subsidies are the government taking money from other industries in order to give that money to the energy industry. ---
**Author:** ![barfridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9de053/32.png) [@barfridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/barfridge)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/47 "2015-06-14T04:24:04Z")
Nice chatting about this interesting subject with you GIGO, I do confess that I have lingered at my screen this afternoon longer than I should have and must mow the lawns or my arse is cactus. No telling when I can return but look forward to more meaningful exchanges asap. cheers ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/48 "2015-06-14T10:20:06Z")
For Deniers whose corporate interests are affected by climate change concerns, the name of the game is procrastination by any means available. This gives the corporation time to respond to the market. For Alarmists, whose agenda is predicated upon acting now to avoid future consequence, the name of the game is accurate prediction. When predictions are accurate, broad enough public support can be garnered to drive the market. To this observer, both sides are guilty of marketing PR over-reach (“lying” is a pejorative for “marketing PR” 😉 ). What else is new, since anyone with a position of influence is typically inclined to retain it? We are deep enough into the putative AGW timeline for Deniers to demand proof that the modeled consequences of elevated CO2 are starting to happen. Right now, imo, the Alarmist PR machine seems as willing as the Denier PR machine to take credit a bit early for telling us so. Melting Arctic sea ice? AGW. Expanding Antartic sea ice? AGW. California drought? AGW. Texas flood? AGW. Toasty Outback? AGW. Bitter US midwest winter? AGW. Those types of PR land grabs are the stuff which fuel Denier campaigns. It won’t be the broad agreement of “scientists” which nail down the argument and settle the lawsuits. When you drag an Alarmist scientist into court and ask her what’s going to happen specifically, you need a specific, proximate prediction. Alarmist PR to the contrary, if our modeling can’t do next winter, there is not a lot of confidence it can do next century. So what needs to happen is for the AOGCMs to become good enough to bring accurate predictions of more proximate events, and then have those proximate events come to pass on a fairly broad scale. Otherwise Murray and his pards will continue be able to continue their Denier procrastination by arguing that any failed predictions are agenda-driven Alarmist “lies.” We don’t have a great history of long-term predictions being accurate, but science does advance, so the Alarmist cause is not lost. In the interim, were I their PR advisor, I’d be inclined to suggest the focus be narrow, near-term (5 years out) predictions for which there is great confidence, rather than broad long-term predictions. Anyone can say there is a 90% chance Miami will drown in a hundred years. No one actually gives a shit about that. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/49 "2015-06-14T14:13:43Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > For Deniers whose corporate interests are affected by climate change concerns, the name of the game is procrastination by any means available. This gives the corporation time to respond to the market. > > For Alarmists, whose agenda is predicated upon acting now to avoid future consequence, the name of the game is accurate prediction. When predictions are accurate, broad enough public support can be garnered to drive the market. > > To this observer, both sides are guilty of marketing PR over-reach (“lying” is a pejorative for “marketing PR” 😉 ). What else is new, since anyone with a position of influence is typically inclined to retain it? The problem for your sorry equivalence fallacy is that as seen already in this thread the evidence points to the denier corporations as the ones that are lying. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > We are deep enough into the putative AGW timeline for Deniers to demand proof that the modeled consequences of elevated CO2 are starting to happen. Right now, imo, the Alarmist PR machine seems as willing as the Denier PR machine to take credit a bit early for telling us so. Melting Arctic sea ice? AGW. Expanding Antartic sea ice? Not relevant for the problem, ice over the ocean is not a big factor for the sea rise, cap ice is. And demonstrated already that it is not a PR thing,[watch the video](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_balog_time_lapse_proof_of_extreme_ice_loss?language=en) (the maker was an sceptic too and sacrificed a lot to get the footage, one can see more in the recent “chasing Ice” documentary) and explain why that is happening while the sun activity is low. It is the rice in CO2 and other global warming gases that explains that much better. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > AGW. California drought? AGW. Texas flood? AGW. Toasty Outback? AGW. Bitter US midwest winter? AGW. As pointed many times before, global warming can not be blamed directly for those issues, but the overwhelming evidence points at AGW as a factor that is getting bigger as more CO2 is released. [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/31/3223791/climate-change-california-drought/](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/31/3223791/climate-change-california-drought/) > [@](#): > > As climatologist and water expert Peter Gleick noted to me, quite separate from the impact of climate change on precipitation, “look at the temperature patterns here, which are leading to a greater ratio of rain-to-snow, faster melting of snow, and greater evaporation. Those changes alone make any drought more intense.” > > But what of the possibility that climate change is actually contributing to the reduction in rainfall? After all, as Daniel Swain has noted, “calendar year 2013 was the driest on record in California’s 119 year formal record, and likely the driest since at least the Gold Rush era.” > > Trenberth explained that, according to climate models, “some areas are more likely to get drier including the SW: In part this relates a bit to the wet get wetter and dry get drier syndrome, so the subtropics are more apt to become drier. It also relates to the expansion and poleward shift of the tropics.” > > Back in 2005, I first heard climatologist Jonathan Overpeck discuss evidence that temperature and annual precipitation had started to head in opposite directions in the U.S. Southwest, which raises the question of whether we are at the “dawn of the super-interglacial drought.” Overpeck, a leading drought expert at the University of Arizona, warned “climate change seldom occurs gradually.” > What’s going on in the Southwest is what anthropogenic global warming looks like for the region. > > In a major 2008 USGS report, Abrupt Climate Change, the Bush Administration (!) warned: > “In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier.” > > In 2011 US Senate testimony, Overpeck stated: > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > There is broad agreement in the climate science research community that the Southwest, including New Mexico, will very likely continue to warm. There is also a strong consensus that the same region will become drier and increasingly snow-free with time, particularly in the winter and spring. Climate science also suggests that the warmer atmosphere will lead to more frequent and more severe (drier) droughts in the future. All of the above changes have already started, in large part driven by human-caused climate change. > > > > ``` > > Overpeck told me this week, “because I think the science only gets stronger with time, I’ll stick to my statements that you quote.” He added, “what’s going on in the Southwest is what anthropogenic global warming looks like for the region.” > > Beyond the expansion and drying of the subtropics predicted by climate models, some climatologists have found in their research evidence that the stunning decline in Arctic sea ice would also drive western drought — by shifting storm tracks. Just as we can not tell if an specific home run was made by a baseball player that is using steroids the fact is that the player is banned because we do know that the probability of an steroid user increases over the players that do not use them. And so it is now with droughts and floods, depending on the region they will increase, but in the meantime they are also getting more intense because all that energy and matter added (more water vapor is added to the atmosphere in the already wet ares) has to go somewhere when a natural storm or hurricane comes along. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Those types of PR land grabs are the stuff which fuel Denier campaigns. It has been pointed also many times before that this is really a dumb platitude, it is the deniers that ones that do their damnest to frame the discussion, nice racket when the merchants of doubt out there push for an equivalence that is not there. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > It won’t be the broad agreement of “scientists” which nail down the argument and settle the lawsuits. When you drag an Alarmist scientist into court and ask her what’s going to happen specifically, you need a specific, proximate prediction. Alarmist PR to the contrary, if our modeling can’t do next winter, there is not a lot of confidence it can do next century. Like if a contrarian poster that also claimed to follow the science did not pointed many times to the researchers that are beginning to model the Arctic and their effect on winters in the northern hemisphere properly. This was one of those researchers explaining in 2010 and about why the harsh winters do not contradict global warming: > **[Opinion | Bundle Up, It’s Global Warming (Published 2010)](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/opinion/26cohen.html)** > > Why is it so cold and snowy in Europe and the Eastern United States? Global warming is affecting the snow cover in Siberia. And the data is showing nowadays that he is indeed getting better at prediction than others that do not take the loss of ice and other factors into consideration. > **[The Boston Globe](https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2015/03/17/snowpredictor/zpURnRt5fv7Waxwb04cRzK/story.html)** > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > So what needs to happen is for the AOGCMs to become good enough to bring accurate predictions of more proximate events, and then have those proximate events come to pass on a fairly broad scale. Otherwise Murray and his pards will continue be able to continue their Denier procrastination by arguing that any failed predictions are agenda-driven Alarmist “lies.” > > We don’t have a great history of long-term predictions being accurate, but science does advance, so the Alarmist cause is not lost. In the interim, were I their PR advisor, I’d be inclined to suggest the focus be narrow, near-term (5 years out) predictions for which there is great confidence, rather than broad long-term predictions. Anyone can say there is a 90% chance Miami will drown in a hundred years. No one actually gives a shit about that. And that takes us to the matter at hand. You did not read the thread, Murray and many of the right wing governors claimed that the lawsuit is about the science, but the lawsuit is not about that, his PR office is the one making the stingy lie by claiming that his lawsuit is about that and not about the technicality about the EPA being able to make rules to control emissions. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/50 "2015-06-14T17:47:32Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The problem for your sorry equivalence fallacy is that as seen already in this thread the evidence points to the denier corporations as the ones that are lying. Got it. Thanks! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/51 "2015-06-14T17:57:03Z")
We’ll see if that lesson was learned. As pointed before, the lawsuits are not looking to declare the EPA as if they are lying about the science. The coal companies and the states are looking to declare the EPA as being wrong on technicalities and about not following the rules according to the lawsuit. The sorry CEO is claiming that this lawsuit ‘will demonstrate how the EPA is lying about the science’ … well, that is a very stinky _ **lie** _ from the CEO. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/52 "2015-06-15T01:03:30Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > For Deniers whose corporate interests are affected by climate change concerns, the name of the game is procrastination by any means available. This gives the corporation time to respond to the market. I don’t think many of them are that aware. Through the amazing power of cognitive dissonance and wishful thinking I think many have truly deluded themselves into believing it’s all just going to go away. Not too long ago Exxon engaged in a concerted program of divesting themselves of alternate-energy ventures to focus on their core business of actively destroying the planet. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > For Alarmists, whose agenda is predicated upon acting now to avoid future consequence, the name of the game is accurate prediction. When predictions are accurate, broad enough public support can be garnered to drive the market. Predictions only have to be accurate enough to be actionable; if the test is to be so awesomely numerically exact for so long that even the most hardcore denier will be forced to abandon claims of “coincidence” and alternate attributions, it will never happen. The policy goal of climate science is to be a critically useful guide for policymakers who are presumably intelligent and are advised by the scientifically knowledgeable like the National Academy and the IPCC. It is _ **not** _ the goal of climate science to persuade idiots of its correctness through relentless proselytizing and more and more facts. That doesn’t work and never will. I cited some interesting articles about that from _New Scientist_ a couple of years ago, when a group of distinguished climate scientists testified before Congress. The more facts they were given, the more the Congressional Republicans got their backs up. The reality is that predictions have been plenty good enough since at the very least the IPCC Third Assessment, and even long before that James Hansen’s early climate model from the 80s turned out to track the “most-likely” IPCC A1B emissions scenario quite well. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > To this observer, both sides are guilty of marketing PR over-reach (“lying” is a pejorative for “marketing PR” 😉 ). What else is new, since anyone with a position of influence is typically inclined to retain it? That’s a ridiculous false equivalency, as if the climate scientist doing research in pursuit of knowledge is exactly equivalent in goals and motivation to the industrial tycoon in pursuit of billions of dollars of self-enrichment. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Melting Arctic sea ice? AGW. Expanding Antartic sea ice? AGW. California drought? AGW. Texas flood? AGW. Toasty Outback? AGW. Bitter US midwest winter? AGW. Come on, **Pedant**! I’m pretty sure you know better than that. The melting Arctic is probably the most extreme, dramatic, plainly visible, and modeled and predicted effect of climate change, and one of its most consequential immediate impacts. The Antarctic is more insulated by ocean and atmospheric circulations but is now losing an average of about several hundred gigatons of historically permanent ice sheet mass every year. And as we have often discussed, Antarctic _ **sea ice** _ is of no relevance to this loss as it’s almost entirely a seasonal phenomenon and is actually exacerbated by global warming because of the ice sheet loss and increased precipitation. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a denialist site talk about “the increase in Antarctic sea ice”, cleverly slipping the word “sea” in there – or better still, I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve seen some denialist parrot that same claim. I _ **know** _ you know better. You don’t help your credibility by sinking to their level. As for the rest – droughts, floods, etc. – the scientific literature doesn’t talk about individual events (except perhaps as illustrative hypotheticals) but it does talk about statistical expectations of long-term regional disruptions and extreme weather (for example, the IPCC SREX). At some point the denialist scoffing that unusual droughts and floods, unusual heat and cold, and such opposites are all being blamed on AGW will stop being funny when half the world’s regional climates have been turned on their heads, centennial-scale weather events become decadal, and the “unusual” and the “extreme” become the norm. We’re much of the way there already. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Anyone can say there is a 90% chance Miami will drown in a hundred years. No one actually gives a shit about that. If extrapolations of known, recorded, and predicted sea level rise show that major coastlines will be underwater in relatively near timeframes, corroborated by direct observations of rising sea temperatures and hundreds of gigatons of melting ice sheets, someone had better start giving a shit. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/53 "2015-06-15T05:50:42Z")
whoa! How can you guys post on the Internet when NYC is under water?! …and a carton of milk cost $13 and gas $9 / gallon. [FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015](http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/06/12/flashback-abcs-08-prediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june) (whoa! you guys buy milk by the gallons) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/54 "2015-06-15T06:09:58Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > whoa! How can you guys post on the Internet when NYC is under water?! …and a carton of milk cost $13 and gas $9 / gallon. [FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015](http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/06/12/flashback-abcs-08-prediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june) > > (whoa! you guys buy milk by the gallons) :rolleyes: Ever since the 70s when mainstream media predicted a cooling world based on very few opinions and ignored the vast majority of scientists that reported that warming was coming, the MSM has not been a reliable source of information on this issue. BTW I pointed at that years ago. And the same goes here, ABC was not looking at what most of the published science reported. In a previous tread I pointed at what scientists actually report, a rise of the oceans of just between 1 to 2 meters by the end of the century. (The important bit starts at 4:51) Of course that depended on the loss of the cap ice **not** accelerating so it could happen that that 1 meter of a rise will be seen by mid century. As science writer Peter Hadfield reported, ABC should consult the published science and that is what I and many others that post here do, we look at the science (and history too), so you should do likewise. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/55 "2015-06-15T06:56:36Z")
And speaking of Newsbusters as a source, it is clear that in that article the impression is made to be part of the news, in reality the makers of that opinion magazine piece at ABC were taking requests from people so they could furnish their opinions, not an article that is dealing with facts indeed. Many times Newsbusters has been caught misleading their readers. Back on 2012 there was an article from them that claimed that global warming had been debunked in a study published by Nature. That was not the case. > **[Esper Millennial Cooling in Context](https://skepticalscience.com/esper-millennial-cooling-in-context.html)** > > A new paper in Nature Climate Change from Esper et al. (2012) develops a 2,000-year local summer temperature reconstruction based on 587 high-precision maximum latewood density (MXD) tree ring series from northern Scandinavia, using living and... > [@](#): > > The reaction from climate contrarians in the popular media has been predictable; for example, they have made various outlandish claims about the study somehow debunking global warming The link made in that part of “the reaction from climate contrarians” indeed goes to that infamous Newsbusters boast. The evidence now shows how misleading Newsbusters was then, but never fear! The ugly truth about the deception to their readers will never be exposed to them. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/56 "2015-06-15T07:51:30Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > whoa! How can you guys post on the Internet when NYC is under water?! …and a carton of milk cost $13 and gas $9 / gallon. [FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015](http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/06/12/flashback-abcs-08-prediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june) > > (whoa! you guys buy milk by the gallons) I’m not sure if we’re supposed to take this as a serious attempt to present information or if you’re just having fun (I hope) with a nonsensically humorous site that claims to be dedicated to “exposing and combating liberal media bias” … lol! 😃 In any case, thanks to **Gigo** for his usual patient rebuttal of complete bullshit. To add a few more simple facts to this. No, no serious science ever said “NYC will be under water by 2015” … or 2115, for that matter. Here’s what the science said: [ul] [li]In 2007 the IPCC AR4 projected an average global sea level rise of **0.35 m** in the roughly 100 years between the last two decades of the 20th century and the last decade of the 21st (2090-2099), for the most likely emissions scenarios.[/li][/ul] [ul] [li]In 2013, based on the latest evidence, the AR5 _ **increased** _ the projections to a mean of **0.47 m** sea level rise for a similar time period (roughly by 2100) and the most likely emissions scenarios.[/li][/ul] [ul] [li]In between these two reports, NYC was, in fact, significantly flooded by the storm surge of Hurricane Sandy, just the kind of storm surge that sea level rise will greatly amplify, prompting the New York State governor to sign the Community Risk and Resiliency Act to mitigate the risks of sea level rise and storm surges, following the recommendations of the New York Sea Level Rise Task Force that assessed sea level rise threats to the state’s coastal areas and issued a series of recommendations that have since been codified in state policies.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 9:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/57 "2015-06-15T09:38:03Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Come on, **Pedant**! I’m pretty sure you know better than that. > > The melting Arctic is probably the most extreme, dramatic, plainly visible, and modeled and predicted effect of climate change, and one of its most consequential immediate impacts. > > The Antarctic is more insulated by ocean and atmospheric circulations but is now losing an average of about several hundred gigatons of historically permanent ice sheet mass every year. And as we have often discussed, Antarctic _ **sea ice** _ is of no relevance to this loss as it’s almost entirely a seasonal phenomenon and is actually exacerbated by global warming because of the ice sheet loss and increased precipitation. I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a denialist site talk about “the increase in Antarctic sea ice”, cleverly slipping the word “sea” in there – or better still, I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve seen some denialist parrot that same claim. I _ **know** _ you know better. You don’t help your credibility by sinking to their level. > > … > > If extrapolations of known, recorded, and predicted sea level rise show that major coastlines will be underwater in relatively near timeframes, corroborated by direct observations of rising sea temperatures and hundreds of gigatons of melting ice sheets, someone had better start giving a shit. I’m sure you know way more about AGW than I. And I have no inclination to open the can of worms here. Seriously. But if you look at your language you’ll see what I’m talking about w/ the PR stuff. What we have here is the “melting arctic” without mentioning sea ice, and the "clever slipping in of ‘sea’ when we talk about the Antarctic. Then we have the explanation why the increase in Antarctic sea is (the same stuff that comprises the melting arctic) is also AGW. IOW, sea ice is an Arctic, but not an Antarctic, harbinger. These fine tunings in the message have arisen after the appearances of the facts. We didn’t decide Antarctic sea ice was exactly what the AOCGMs modeled until after it showed up. We didn’t decide deeper sea, and not surface, ocean warming was exactly what AOCGMs modeled until after that’s what we measured. But in the interim we just like to talk about the “melting arctic” without mentioning the sea ice that is melting there is the same stuff accumulating in record quantity in the Antarctic. We truck out an explanation for why Katrina is a harbinger of AGW, and the following year (one of the most quiescent NA hurricane seasons on record) we truck out a different explanation of why THAT is also AGW. I recommend being more transparent about what we do and do not know, and I recommend we focus on very specific, relatively near-term (5 years) predictions about what will happen, and where. When you focus on the grand proclamations that are several generations in the future, no one gives a shit, even if they should. Maybe that’s what drives the Alarmists nuts. Right now the only thing I see affecting beach front real estate prices is the economy. I don’t see real people with real money giving a shit that what they just bought is going to get drowned at some vague future point. Perhaps together we can pray for a horrible hurricane season, and hope people forget how our explanations after the fact really mean we are just lousy at predicting what is actually going to happen to the earth with the increase in greenhouse gases. ["_The absence of a major hurricane in the U.S. this (2013) season means the continuation of a record-long streak…_](http://www.climatecentral.org/news/what-happened-to-the-2013-atlantic-hurricane-season-16616) We shouldn’t oversell our ability to predict. PR hype exists in spades on the Alarmist side, and it’s just fodder for Deniers. But if you buy into it, feel free to start shorting beach front property to prove that you, personally, give a shit. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/58 "2015-06-15T14:28:43Z")
Water levels along the Eastern seaboard have risen by a foot over the last 80-odd years. You would do well in the long term to short beachfront property whether you believe in AGW or not. > [@Rune](#): > > whoa! How can you guys post on the Internet when NYC is under water?! …and a carton of milk cost $13 and gas $9 / gallon. [FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015](http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2015/06/12/flashback-abcs-08-prediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june) > > (whoa! you guys buy milk by the gallons) Apparently, you missed [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Sandy_in_New_York). In any event, you should know better than to rely on _Newsbusters_ for anything other than right wing fantasism. _Earth 2100_ was supposed to show the worst case scenarios for the future, not a prediction of what would actually happen. You can go watch it on YouTube and see for yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/59 "2015-06-15T14:33:03Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Murray is the guy who [runs deadly unsafe coal mines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Murray) and who, in response to Obama’s first-term election, immediately laid off 156 people and [made up a prayer asking God to save the Lord’s coal enterprises](http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/11/09/robert_murray_is_history_s_greatest_monster.html) from the war on coal about to be waged by the godless Muslim. > > Robert Murray’s picture appears in the dictionary under “unconscionable asshole”. Not that I disagree with you–Murray is Loon with a capital LOON–but I can’t seem to find in your links where he referred to Obama as a Muslim. Mind you, I just flew back to Beijing so my eyes may just be tired. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2015, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515/60 "2015-06-15T15:43:09Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I’m sure you know way more about AGW than I. And I have no inclination to open the can of worms here. Seriously. But if you look at your language you’ll see what I’m talking about w/ the PR stuff. That also is based on a false equivalence fallacy. it was the PR from deniers sources and contrarians that came also with the idea to frame the ice issue in such a way that it seems that it is science the one with the problem and not the contrarian media. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > What we have here is the “melting arctic” without mentioning sea ice, and the "clever slipping in of ‘sea’ when we talk about the Antarctic. Then we have the explanation why the increase in Antarctic sea is (the same stuff that comprises the melting arctic) is also AGW. IOW, sea ice is an Arctic, but not an Antarctic, harbinger. These fine tunings in the message have arisen after the appearances of the facts. We didn’t decide Antarctic sea ice was exactly what the AOCGMs modeled until after it showed up. We didn’t decide deeper sea, and not surface, ocean warming was exactly what AOCGMs modeled until after that’s what we measured. That is called science, and it was one of the reasons why the IPCC punted about cap ice acceleration loss in early reports. Far from being alarmists the scientists and the IPCC that looks at the already published science are conservative by their nature. Of course since more evidence has been found the conclusions are that the ones that worried that the ice in the poles was going to be affected by global warming and that the losses would accelerate were correct. > **[Is Antarctica losing or gaining ice?](https://skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice-intermediate.htm)** > > \While the interior of East Antarctica is gaining land ice, overall Antarctica is losing land ice at an accelerating rate. Antarctic sea ice is growing \despite\ a strongly warming Southern Ocean.\ > [@](#): > > While the interior of East Antarctica is gaining land ice, overall Antarctica has been losing land ice at an accelerating rate. Antarctic sea ice is growing despite a strongly warming Southern Ocean. > [@](#): > > The most recent estimate of land ice change that combines estimates from these three approaches reported (Shepherd and others, 2012) that between 1992 and 2011, the Antarctic Ice Sheets overall lost 1350 giga-tonnes (Gt) or 1,350,000,000,000 tonnes into the oceans, at an average rate of 70 Gt per year (Gt/yr). Because a reduction in mass of 360 Gt/year represents an annual global-average sea level rise of 1 mm, these estimates equate to an increase in global-average sea levels by 0.19 mm/yr, or 1.9 mm per decade. Together with the land ice loss from Greenland, this represents about 30% of the observed global-average sea level rise over this period. > > Examining how this change is spread over time (Figure 1) reveals that the ice sheet as a whole was not losing or gaining ice in the early 1990s. Since then ice loss has begun, and is clearly seen to have accelerated during that time: > [@](#): > > The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing slightly over satellite period (Figures 1&2) but not enough to offset the other losses. And the article shows that that is just for the Antarctic, whoever claims that the Antarctic is gaining enough ice to counter the loss of cap ice in the Arctic regions is selling you Florida swamp property, that now has another reason to be worthless. So, ask yourself then why is it that then the complete failure form contrarians that claimed\*\* and continue to claim\*\* that there is no problem are not suffering a PR nightmare? > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > But in the interim we just like to talk about the “melting arctic” without mentioning the sea ice that is melting there is the same stuff accumulating in record quantity in the Antarctic. We truck out an explanation for why Katrina is a harbinger of AGW, and the following year (one of the most quiescent NA hurricane seasons on record) we truck out a different explanation of why THAT is also AGW. As Kerry Emmanuel can tell you (and he is another Republican scientist BTW), and I pointed many times at him in the past too, wind shear and other factors in a warming world can reduce the number of hurricanes, but the ones that will manage to form will become more intense. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I recommend being more transparent about what we do and do not know, and I recommend we focus on very specific, relatively near-term (5 years) predictions about what will happen, and where. > > When you focus on the grand proclamations that are several generations in the future, no one gives a shit, even if they should. Maybe that’s what drives the Alarmists nuts. Right now the only thing I see affecting beach front real estate prices is the economy. I don’t see real people with real money giving a shit that what they just bought is going to get drowned at some vague future point. "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb We talked about this before and ignoring that people like [Ellon Musk](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-burning-fossil-fuels-is-the-dumbest-experiment-in-history-by-far)exist is yet another type of denial. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Perhaps together we can pray for a horrible hurricane season, and hope people forget how our explanations after the fact really mean we are just lousy at predicting what is actually going to happen to the earth with the increase in greenhouse gases. > > ["_The absence of a major hurricane in the U.S. this (2013) season means the continuation of a record-long streak…_](http://www.climatecentral.org/news/what-happened-to-the-2013-atlantic-hurricane-season-16616) > > We shouldn’t oversell our ability to predict. PR hype exists in spades on the Alarmist side, and it’s just fodder for Deniers. As showed many times here and before it is the PR **tripe** what exist in spades, the PR tripe also suckers many into thinking that the other side is alarmist when in reality it is conservative as scientists and scientific papers report. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > But if you buy into it, feel free to start shorting beach front property to prove that you, personally, give a shit. You do that, and I’m just saying that it is really tiresome to see the conservatives to give a shit still willing to help the PR of the deniers. By know the only reason is to protect the well being of your conservative peer pressure group. All conservatives that do give a shit should look at a longer explanation from yet another Republican scientist Richard Alley on why Antarctic and Arctic cap ice are in trouble: [QUOTE] Apr 13, 2015 Glaciologist Richard Alley shares recent research on the state of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, climate change, and what it means for people living near the coasts in "Crumbling Ice Cliffs? Not-So-Good News for Low Coasts." INSTAAR Monday Seminar, 6 April 2015, University of Colorado Boulder. [/QUOTE] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coal-company-ceo-to-sue-epa-over-global-warming-lying/690515.md?page=4)