FoxNews.com on Global Warming: Misleading Misdirection or Outright Lie?
Reported by Guest Blogger - November 5, 2009 -
Guest blogged by Notveryhow
A FoxNews.com article entitled Earth Cools, and Fight Over Warming Heats Up already contains two falsehoods in just the title. Nowhere to go but down from there, so they repeat these points in the first 2 sentences.
The article, which comes from the Wall Street Journal, and was written by Jeffrey Ball, states,
“Two years ago, a United Nations scientific panel won the Nobel Peace Prize after concluding that global warming is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by man.Then came a development unforeseen by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC: Data suggested that Earth's temperature was beginning to drop.”
Now that is simply not true, or, in simpler terms, a lie. And anything written on a false premise can’t have much to do with reality. Garbage in, Garbage out.
With no links or citations to support the assertions, it is difficult to puzzle out where this nonsense came from. It is a twisted and convoluted trail leading into the depths of the Right Wing global warming disinformation campaign. Please bear with me.
As the website Deep Climate noted, it all seems to have begun when a German scientist, Mojib Latif, presented a paper at the World Climate Conference on the topic of “Advancing climate prediction science." In his presentation, Dr Latif made the statement, “It may well happen that you enter a decade, or maybe even two, when the temperature cools, relative to the present level.” He was not making a prediction. It is clear from his language he was speaking hypothetically.
This was picked up by Fred Pearce of “New Scientist,” who wrote, “One of the world’s top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.”
Then professional denier Marc Morano of Climate Depot wrote, “Mojib Latif of Kiel University in Germany told a UN conference earlier this month that he is now predicting global cooling for several decades..”
So now, a hypothetical at a science conference has been transmogrified into a prediction by a global warming denier, and we are off to the races. The right wing blogosphere ran with it. The Freepers and thousands of others picked up “he is now predicting global cooling” and spread it across the Web. Even such truth-speaking visionairies as Beck and Hannity lent a hand.
As Mark Twain said, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Let’s examine what the science says about that key statement in the Fox article, “Then came a development unforeseen by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC: Data suggested that Earth's temperature was beginning to drop.” Bear with me, this gets kind of crunchy.
First, it is an absolutely absurd contention that pauses, skips or delays in global warming would come as an “unforseen development.” As Stefan Rahmstorf, Physics professor at Potsdam University writing at RealClimate says:
“Even under conditions of anthropogenic global warming (which would contribute a temperature rise of about 0.2 ºC over this period) a flat period or even cooling trend over such a short time span is nothing special and has happened repeatedly before (see 1987-1996). That simply is due to the fact that short-term natural variability has a similar magnitude (i.e. ~0.2 ºC) and can thus compensate for the anthropogenic effects. Of course, the warming trend keeps going up whilst natural variability just oscillates irregularly up and down, so over longer periods the warming trend wins and natural variability cancels out.”
Natural cycles are part of the ‘noise’ in climate statistics. They have been known for decades. So there is no “unforeseen development” that has rattled the IPCC. Fox seems to have just made that up.
Let’s take a glance at Ball's next contention, that “Data suggested that Earth's temperature was beginning to drop.” That is just a flat out lie. No wonder he didn’t try to source it.
There is considerable data available to anyone who wants to seek it out, but the Associated Press ran a story a few days ago that approaches this claim of “global cooling” from an interesting angle. A very good read.
“In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented....“The AP sent expert statisticians NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
"Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.”
So what other gems of truth and wisdom are Ball, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News trying to pass off? Well, the article goes on to claim, “That has reignited debate over what has become scientific consensus: that climate change is due not to nature, but to humans burning fossil fuels.” How many synonyms for “bulls**t” do you know? You can paste them all right here, because this claim is absolutely bogus. There is no “reignited debate.” Consider the following statement from just last month.
A Statement on Climate Change From 18 Scientific Associations:"Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver." (October, 2009)
Fox's article goes on to say, “Scientists who don't believe in man-made global warming cite the cooling as evidence for their case.” Of this there is little doubt. But it is almost embarrassing to see how few and marginalized these are becoming.
John Holdren, with credentials such as Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Director of the Woods Hole Research Center, and now President Obama’s Science Adviser, said:
“The few climate-change ‘skeptics’ with any sort of scientific credentials continue to receive attention in the media out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the merit of their arguments. The attention and credence they receive are a menace, of course, insofar as this delays the development of the political consensus that will be needed before society embraces remedies that are commensurate with the magnitude of the climate-change challenge....”
It is also telling how close the skeptics are to appearing to be "paid consultants."
The Fox article then goes on to state: "'There is a lot of room for improvement' in the models, says Mojib Latif, a climate scientist in Germany and co-author of a paper predicting the planet will cool for perhaps a decade before starting to warm again — a long-term trend he attributes to greenhouse-gas emissions. 'You need to know what you can believe and can't believe from the models.'"
Certainly "there is a lot of room for improvement" in the computer modeling. Climate is incredibly complex. The more data gathered, the finer the conclusion.
But again comes another untruth. Sandwiched between quotes from Latif about computer modeling is, “co-author of a paper predicting the planet will cool for perhaps a decade before starting to warm again."
That is not what Latif’s paper “predicted." His paper states “Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming."
It is much easier to cast doubt than to explain a very complex topic to the public, and Fox is did its job well. As was shown above, scientists expect variation in temperatures. It is the overall trend of averages that are important. And, as seen in the RealClimate data, they are all going up. But if Fox can just create a touch of uncertainty, and give its audience just a hint of excuse to keep their heads in the sand, they have done what they’ve set out to do.
