Chuck Todd, on a recent episode of Meet the Press, highlighted the issue of global warming and climate change. He unapologetically made it clear that he wasn’t interested in hearing from people on the opposing side of the scientific issue, stating:
“We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter. And human activity is a major cause, period. We’re not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is not.”
This is what’s called a “strawman” argument, where you argue against something your opponent never even claimed.
I cannot think of a single credentialed, published skeptical climate scientist who doesn’t believe in the “existence” of climate change, or that “the Earth is getting hotter”, or even that human activity is likely a “major cause”. Pat Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, John Christy, and myself (to name a few) all believe these things. That journalists continue to characterize us as having extremist views shows just how far journalism has fallen as a (somewhat) respectable profession.
What if I claimed that all journalists are sex abusers? Of course, no reasonable person would believe that. Yet, I would wager that up to half of the U.S. population has been led to believe that climate change skeptics are “deniers” (as in, Holocaust deniers), about whom journalist Ellen Goodman said 12 years ago,
“Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers”
At least my hypothetical claim that “journalists are sex abusers” is statistically more accurate than journalists’ claims that we skeptical scientists “deny” this, that, and the other thing (for those allegations, see Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Tom Brokaw, Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, Michael Oreskes, and others).
The fact is that even if humans are, say, 60% responsible for the warming of the global ocean and atmosphere over the last 60 years (which would be consistent with both the UN IPCC’s and Todd’s phrasing), the lastest analyses (Lewis & Curry, 2018) of what this would mean leads to an eventual warming of only 1 deg. C from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (we are currently about halfway to that doubling). That’s only 1/3 of what the IPCC claims is going to happen, and an even smaller fraction of what the ratings-boosting extremists who journalists like to trot out will claim.
A Nuance Chuck Todd is Ill-Prepared to Discuss
Journalists are notoriously under-informed on science issues. For example, let’s look at the claim that recent warming has been human-caused. It is easy to show that such attribution is more faith-based than science-based.
Between 2005 and 2017, the global network of thousands of Argo floats have measured an average temperature increase of the upper half of the ocean of 0.04 deg. C. That’s less than 0.004 C/year, an inconceivably small number.
Significantly, it represents an imbalance in energy flows in and out of the climate system of only 1 part in 260. That’s less than 0.5%, and climate science does not know any of the NATURAL flows of energy to that level of accuracy. The tiny energy imbalance causing the warming is simply ASSUMED to be the fault of humans and not part of some natural cycle in the climate system. Climate models are adjusted in a rather ad hoc manner until their natural energy flows balance, then increasing CO2 from fossil fuels is used as the forcing (imposed energy imbalance) causing warming.
That’s circular reasoning. Or, some might say, garbage in, garbage out.
The belief in human-caused warming exceeding a level that what would be relatively benign, and maybe even beneficial, is just that — a belief. It is not based upon known, established, and quantified scientific principles. It is based upon the assumption that natural climate change does not exist.
So, journalists do a lot of talking about things of which they know nothing. As Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz said in 1939,
louis wachsmuth says
“Antarctic Sea Ice Is “Astonishingly” Low This Melt Season”
Scientists aren’t sure if this trend will continue. ERIC HOLTHAUSJANUARY 7, 2019 6:00 AM. This story was originally published by Grist. It appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.. The frozen region of freshwater ice the size of France partially protects the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from collapsing into the sea. In recent years, the ice-free season in the Ross Sea has become a routine event—but it happened this year on New Year’s Day, the earliest time in history. “Antarctic sea ice extent is astonishingly low this year, not just near the Ross Ice Shelf, but around most of the continent,” says Cecilia Bitz, a polar scientist at the University of Washington. In recent years, scientists have set up seismic monitoring stations on the ice shelf to track the wave energy as it percolates inland, potentially causing stress fractures on the Ross Ice Shelf along the way.Bitz pointed to low ice concentration also happening right now in the Amundsen Sea, more than 1,000 miles away from Ross, and that’s potentially even more worrying. In a worst-case scenario, with continued business as usual greenhouse gas emissions, ice shelves all across West Antarctica could collapse within decades, melted from above and below and shattered by wave action.
WHAT? MORE LIES? Please respond,
louis wachsmuth says
LOOK, MORE FAKE NEWS, Natural disasters caused $160 billion in economic damage worldwide in 2018, dominated by costly wildfires in California and tropical storms in the United States and Asia, according to a new report from the reinsurance giant Munich Re…..“Losses from wildfires in California have risen dramatically in recent years,” Ernst Rauch, the chief climatologist at Munich Re, said in a statement. “At the same time, we have experienced a significant increase in hot, dry summers, which has been a major factor in the formation of wildfires. Many scientists see a link between these developments and advancing climate change.”YALE ENVIRONMENT 360, Published at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
Eva Andrews says
As a lay person, I see posted as rebuttal modern day, current reports that tell me nothing about the natural cycles of the earth. Change does not indicate ‘abnormal change’ created by man. If I’m not mistaken, there is crop yield data that shows that the earth was much warmer in ancient times. I remember observing at the Flourisant National Park in Colorado Springs, the fossil of the Tsetse fly that is only found in tropical Africa today. They also report, and you can observe in the fossils at Flourisant NP, the fossil record of the vegetation was very large indicating a much warmer climate than you find today in CO.
If the climate of the earth is changing and is not ‘convenient’ to us today, or called a disaster, that does not mean it is caused by man. Imagine yourself during the time when the Ice Age was beginning. Now that’s a climate change precedence!