Demand Debate

Former lobbyist Steven Milloy runs a website called demanddebate.com, which is designed to facilitate debates that "eliminate bias in environmental education" and counter environmental "alarmism," etc.

Anyway, an atmospheric scientist from Texas contacted Milloy to demand a debate. Milloy first offered to just send the guy a horrible video (which I've covered previously), then offered to find a debater, then just trailed off and was never heard from again.

Steven Milloy on the IPCC

Former Exxon Mobil and Philip Morris lobbyist Steven Milloy has written a new column for FOX News about the IPCC's recently released synthesis report on climate change. Of course, he uses his usual diversionary tactics and misinformation to discuss the issue. For example, he says:

That key issue, of course, is whether or not manmade CO2 emissions drive global temperature. In its shockingly brief and superficial treatment of this crucial issue, the U.N. states, in relevant part, that, “Most of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures, since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over every continent (except Antarctica)."

"Shockingly brief and superficial"? Maybe it just seems that way because you're only reading the Summary For Policymakers. Notice the key word there: "Summary." In reality (someplace Milloy would rather his readers not look), there is an 11-chapter report on this very issue, titled "The Physical Science Basis." At this point, I'd like to remind everyone that Steven Milloy spent the better part of his career as a lobbyist, and in all likelihood knows exactly what he's doing here.

In the following paragraph, Milloy persists with this characterization, and adds on the usual misleading contrarian talking points:

This glib statement overlooks that fact that from 1940 to 1975 globally-averaged temperature declined (giving rise to a much-hyped scare about a looming ice age) while manmade CO2 emissions increased. Global temperature has fallen since 1998 despite ever-increasing CO2 emissions. So for 27 of the last 50 years, globally-averaged temperatures have declined while CO2 emissions have increased.

First of all, this "glib statement" does not overlook the mid-century cooling period. It's not as if Steven Milloy is the only person to notice a mid-century drop in temperature. The report itself addresses that very issue (as has been done over and over). Here is a graph (adapted from Meehl et al (2004) and Moberg (2003) ) that illustrates radiative forcing attribution:


Second, the "looming ice age" talking point has been repeatedly debunked (see here and here for just two examples). It is Milloy who is hyping the "ice age scare" here. There were some (few and far between) who thought such a result possible (due to the then-recent studies of sulfate aerosols, which have a significant cooling effect - insofar as they reflect incoming solar radiation), but the weight of the scientific community (such as the very important National Academy of Sciences) said that such a conclusion would be premature. Contrast that with the overwhelming weight of the scientific community, peer reviewed journals and scientific organizations who now say that greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for our recent warming trend.

Temperatures have fallen since 1998? Please. This is cherry-picking at its worst. 1998 was particularly warm due to an El Nino event that year. If you pick 1997 or 1999 as your starting year, you'll see a steady temperature increase. In fact, graphs speak louder than words. Look at this and then determine for yourself whether or not temperatures are dropping:


Milloy continues:

If there’s a cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature in the last 50 years at all, it seems to be slightly in the opposite direction from what the U.N. claims.

Take another look at the graph I just posted. It only "seems" to be an inverse relationship if you accept Milloy's (again, a former lobbyist) slick characterization. On the other hand, if you use your eyes and your brain to look at the relationship directly, you will see that Milloy is simply wrong.

It goes on:

And if we are experiencing manmade global warming, someone should tell Antarctica to get with the program.

"Global" warming means that the globe's average temperature will increase. It doesn't mean that summer will never give way to winter again. It doesn't mean that nighttime will be warmer than daytime, and it doesn't mean that you will never experience local cooling. It means that the average annual global temperature will go up. In sum, this line of argument is just petty sniping with no substance.

Milloy trudges forward:

The U.N. also says that, "Atmospheric concentrations of CO2… exceed by far the natural range over the 650,000 years." Readers, apparently, are supposed to let their imaginations run away with them as to the implications of this statement. What the U.N. left out is that the relationship between CO2 and temperature over the last 650,000 years is precisely opposite of what it has led the public to believe with statements like the preceding one. Increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 actually lag global temperature increases anywhere from 800-2,000 years according to the Antarctic ice core record that covers the 650,000-year span of time.

Let their imaginations run wild? First of all, that is a 100% accurate description. Here is a graph of the past 400,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration (adapted from the IPCC):


Second, the lag is true but irrelevant. Although temperatures led CO2 increases in the past (see the Milankovich cycles), there was an important feedback relationship between the two. Rather than letting their imaginations run wild, people can actually read the report itself, which describes the relationship. In sum, each one causes the other. That's why it's so significant that the two match each other so closely:


Another favored tactic of Milloy is to cherry-pick his studies:

A new temperature reconstruction for the past 2,000 years created by Craig Loehle of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement indicates that, 1,000 years ago, globally averaged temperature was about 0.3 degrees Celsius warmer than the current temperature. Since that climatic "heat wave" obviously wasn’t caused by coal-fired power plants and SUVs, the current temperature is quite within natural variability, further deflating the UN’s rash conclusion about the warming of the past 50 years.

Rather than picking one of the many reputable peer-reviewed temperature reconstructions available (there are plenty), Milloy relies on a study from Energy & Environment. Energy & Environment is a poorly regarded social science journal. It is not carried in the ISI listing of peer-reviewed journals, and it has been roundly criticized for publishing substandard papers in the past. Additionally, it's run by global warming contrarians for the sole purpose of giving other contrarians something resembling a scientific platform. Basically, it's the equivalent to an unaccredited or online college.

This is what you see when you look at real peer-reviewed scientific journals:


Way to pick and choose, Milloy. All of the reputable studies say the exact opposite of what you argue in your FOX News column.

The madness doesn't end there:

There's also the matter of the quality of the temperature records relied on by the U.N.

Even though Milloy sets this up as a criticism of the U.N.'s favored temperatures, he goes on to criticize the way NASA reads temperatures. This kinda ignores the fact that the most of the peer-reviewed journals rely on the NOAA's temperature record, not NASA's.

Oh yeah, and there is lots of hyperbole and invective, too:

drink the U.N. Kool-Aid... knuckle under to global government-directed energy rationing and economic planning... the U.N.’s frantic efforts to distract us with a multitude of dire predictions of climatic Armageddon... shockingly brief and superficial treatment... glib statement... let their imaginations run away with them... that climatic "heat wave" obviously wasn’t caused by coal-fired power plants and SUVs... deflating the UN’s rash conclusion... raised serious questions about the validity of official temperature records... the U.N. claims to have divined a global warming trend... NASA alarmist James Hansen... So we can’t possibly have all that much confidence in what the U.N. claims to be happening global temperature-wise. Don’t be distracted by the alarmist arm-waving and sideshows... There's no evidence that man-made CO2 emissions have created any environmental problem and certainly no scientific justification for handing the keys of the American economy over to the U.N.

UPDATE: Just for good measure, I'd like to point out that Steven Milloy has, in the past, misrepresented a NASA data correction, misquoted a U.K. judge, and lied about an opinion poll (as predicted prior to its publication).

Steven Milloy: Liar

Rather than just burying them in the weekly links, I thought these two items were worth highlighting.

FOX News columnist Steven Milloy this week lied about a recent poll (as predicted), and lied about Rachel Carson.

FOX News on Al Gore - Part II

FOX News contributor and non-scientist Steven Milloy (who does not have a PhD in anything whatsoever, nor does he consult with - or cite - anybody with any relevant expertise) has a new column in which he argues that "25 percent of 'An Inconvenient Truth' is not true," and that moviegoers should be offered a full refund. His analysis is predictably awful.

First off, I thought this bit was particularly amusing:

Gore attempts to smear his critics by likening them to the tobacco industry.

That's an odd protest coming from Steven Milloy, who received $180,000 in 2000 and 2001 for his work as a consultant for Philip Morris (he also has many other ties to the tobacco industry).

Anyway, Milloy starts off by using a British judge as his sole scientific source, rather than any kind of climate scientist. As a preliminary matter, it should be pointed out that this same judge said that the movie was broadly accurate, particularly relating to its portrayal of anthropogenic greenhouse gases as the main driver of global warming (he even uses the IPCC report as his scientific source). The judge only went into minor factual points, even going so far as to put the word "errors" in scare quotes (lest someone like Milloy mistake what he was saying). But according to Milloy, there would be nothing left of An Inconvenient Truth if this judge's alleged "errors" (Milloy doesn't use scare quotes even though the judge in question did) were stripped away from the film. So let's take a look at what Milloy has to say.

Gore then links Hurricane Katrina with global warming. But the judge ruled that was erroneous, so the Katrina scenes would wind up on the cutting-room floor.

You can read what Gore actually said here. Basically, Gore mentions how warmer waters can lead to increased hurricane intensity (a claim well corroborated by many respected atmospheric and climate scientists). He then names a few, including Katrina, to illustrate the destruction involved.

There is a serious debate going on in the scientific community right now on the topic of hurricane intensity and global warming. Kerry Emanuel and others say that yes, hurricanes and tropical storms will gain more net energy (and thus become more destructive) as the earth gets warmer (thus supplying that energy to the hurricane's heat engine). This is borne out by the close correlation between temperature increase and hurricane intensity increase, as well as basic thermodynamics.

Atmospheric science professor William Gray (an old man fond of comparing Gore to Hitler - "Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews") and others disagree, saying that our recent surge in hurricane intensity is simply due to a decadal cycle.

The bottom line is that this point is unresolved (see Storm World). This was certainly not an error, or even an "error," in Gore's movie, since he has significant scientific support for his contentions. The only way you could attack this is if you think Gore should have sidetracked the discussion to go into the subtleties of the Emanuel/Gray debates. Simply put: Milloy is the one misleading here.

Milloy goes on:

...about the 16:30 minute mark, when, according to the judge, Al Gore erroneously links receding glaciers — specifically Mt. Kilimanjaro — with global warming.

No, what the judge said was that Kilimanjaro specifically cannot be attributed to global warming. This is very very different from how Milloy (a tricky lobbyist) presents the issue. Milloy says that the judge called Gore out on linking any receding glaciers (which includes Kilimanjaro) to global warming. In fact, the way that Milloy presents the issue is downright wrong. The world's glaciers are in fact retreating because (surprise!) the earth is undeniably getting warmer. Kilimanjaro, however, was not a great example of this claim, due to the other contributing factors to its retreat (see Tropical Glacier Retreat).

Milloy goes on:

As the judge ruled that the Antarctic ice core data presented in the film "do not establish what Mr. Gore asserts," this inconvenient untruth also needs to go.

This is a case of the judge simply being wrong. This is also precisely why Milloy was wrong in relying on a British judge as his scientific authority. What Gore actually said was this:

The relationship is very complicated. But there is one relationship that is more powerful than all the others and it is this. When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer, because it traps more heat from the sun inside

That is precisely, 100% right (see The Lag Between Temperature and CO2).

Milloy:

Gore spends about 35 seconds on how the drying of Lake Chad is due to global warming. The judge ruled that this claim wasn’t supported by the scientific evidence.

Nope. According to Gavin Schmidt of NASA:

There is substantial evidence that at least a portion of this drying out is human-caused. A few recent papers (Held et al, PNAS; Chung and Ramanathan and Biasutti and Giannini) have addressed causes ranging from Indian Ocean changes in sea surface temperature to the increase in atmospheric aerosols in the Northern hemisphere. Gore uses this example to illustrate that there are droughts in some regions even while other areas are flooding. Unfortunately this is exactly what the models suggest will happen.

Milloy:

...a 30-second clip about how global warming is causing polar bears to drown because they have to swim greater distances to find sea ice on which to rest. The judge ruled however, that the polar bears in question had actually drowned because of a particularly violent storm.

It appears that, yes, the polar bears here drowned because of a storm. This is the story that sparked the film's anecdote:

"We know short swims up to 15 miles are no problem, and we know that one or two may have swum up to 100 miles. But that is the extent of their ability, and if they are trying to make such a long swim and they encounter rough seas they could get into trouble," said Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS.

The new study, carried out in part of the Beaufort Sea, shows that between 1986 and 2005 just 4% of the bears spotted off the north coast of Alaska were swimming in open waters. Not a single drowning had been documented in the area.

However, last September, when the ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of Alaska, 51 bears were spotted, of which 20% were seen in the open sea, swimming as far as 60 miles off shore.

The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days later after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. "We estimate that of the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds," said the report.

Milloy plods along:

On the heels of that error, Gore launches into a 3-minute "explanation" of how global warming will shut down the Gulf Stream and send Europe into an ice age. The judge ruled that this was an impossibility.

Whoah, there. The judge certainly did not call it "an impossibility." He said that the IPCC called it "unlikely." When the IPCC says that something is "unlikely," though, they mean that there is a 5-10% chance of it happening. Of course, it seems far more likely that the Gulf Stream will simply be slowed down by about 30% by 2100. But there is certainly no error, or even "error," in mentioning the more severe possibilities. Simply put: Milloy is wrong again.

I'm going to skip a bunch of Milloy's "facts" and "journalism" here because it's really tiring. But I just want to point out one more:

Gore also says in the film that 2005 is the hottest year on record. But NASA data actually show that 1934 was the hottest year on record in the U.S. — 2005 is not even in the top 10.

Notice the weasel words added in the second sentence: "in the U.S." When NASA corrected its data earlier this year, it was only in relation to the continental United States. They found a minor error that meant that 1998 (which was previously thought to have been only 0.01ºC warmer than 1934 in the continental United States) was actually 0.02ºC cooler. The global temperature rankings, however, remained unchanged. In sum, Milloy's assertion here is pure, 100% bullshit.

What bothers me about this entire article is that in-and-out hit pieces like these are a dime a dozen in the mainstream news today, while serious science journalism is truly rare.

UPDATE: Bonus FOX News graphic.

NASA, GISS, 1934, 1998, etc.

This past week, Steve McIntyre wrote an email to NASA pointing out a jump in their U.S. GISS data from 1999 to 2000. The NASA researchers looked into it, discovered a faulty assumption in their analysis, corrected their error, and sent a letter thanking McIntyre. In the old data set, 1998 and 1934 were in a dead-heat for the title of "warmest year on record in the United States," with 1998 being 0.01ºC warmer. However, in the corrected data, it turns out that 1934 is 0.02ºC warmer. Mind you, this is only for the continental United States temperatures, not those of the entire world (1998 is still hotter on a world-wide scale).

First, let's take a look at the old NASA data:


Now let's look at the new data:


Shocking! But of course, you can always rely on the same old standbys to highlight this finding in big, bold letters in an attempt to further the idea among the misinformed that climate science as a whole is too inexact to inform any public policy decisions whatsoever.

First off, we have a FOX News alert from Steven Milloy:
Junk Science: New Science Challenges Climate Alarmists?

"climate alarmist-friendly media...manmade global warming boogeyman...alarmists...an embarrassing temperature error rained on their parade...existing climate models are so prone to error...energy price-hiking and economy-harming laws and regulations...NASA’s alarmist-in-chief James Hansen...fiction...climate alarmists...even wrong on the matter of 1998 being the warmest year on record...1934 is the new warmest year...embarrassing setback for alarmists... alarmists... clamping down on CO2 emissions from SUVs may do absolutely nothing... the climate-worry bubble... ominous weather reports"

Next, we have a report from the Wall Street Journal's college dropout James Taranto.

"it turns out that there was a Y2K bug--and it contributed to global warming hype... The one Y2K bug that happened to slip through was the one that contributed to another alarmist narrative. But when you think about it, it makes sense. NASA's faulty findings didn't look faulty to global warmists, who saw exactly what they were expecting to see."

Finally, we can always count on college dropout Rush Limbaugh:

"The thing to remember is that 1998 is not the warmest year on record. It forms one of the central theses about the current global warming hoax... " We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA. The man-made global warming is in the scientific community with false data... I don't know if they intend to correct it or not. I doubt you'll hear anything about this, other than this program... We're nowhere near as hot as we have been 75, 71 years ago. Nowhere near as hot..." So it is just more evidence, ladies and gentlemen, that this whole global warming thing is a scientific hoax..." In four or five years we'll have a majority of people understanding how phony and fraudulent this is... raise your taxes, control more of your life, reduce your lifestyle, all coming from the United Nations"

My favorite part of this particular response is how Limbaugh embellishes the facts and says "We're nowhere near as hot as we have been 75, 71 years ago," despite the fact that, in the continental United States, 1934 was only 0.02ºC warmer than 1998. Also, Limbaugh is possibly unaware that the present five-year average temperature is still warmer than it was back then, and that the worldwide 1998 temperatures on a whole are also warmer.

So once again, I'd like to recommend the Newsweek article The Truth About Denial.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin joins the party: "NASA quietly fixes flawed temperature data; 1998 was NOT the warmest year in the millenium"