Posts Tagged ‘Global Warming’
Ross Gelbspan’s Pulitzer Prize
The other day I was glancing through some press releases related to global warming events when I happened across a release from a group called Religious Witness for the Earth which announced a November 10, 2003 event marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. signing of the Kyoto Protocol. The group included a list of a number of speakers including,
Ross Gelbspan [who] is the author of “The Heat Is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription.” Gelbspan won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for a series of articles that he wrote for the Boston Globe.
This is a meme that just won’t die despite it having been debunked years ago. A Google and Lexis search, for example, finds numerous articles about Gelbspan in which he is referred to as winning a 1984 Pulitzer Prize.
First, Gelbspan did not write any of the articles in the series that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. He was apparently involved in editing and conceiving at least some of the stories.
Second, Gelbspan was not among seven Boston Globe employees who were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that series.
So why do so many people think he did? Because “The Heat Is On” — in which Gelbspan complains about how global warming critics distort the truth — touted Gelbspan as a “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist” and Gelbspan has apparently done little in the intervening years to dissuade people of this falsehood despite being called on it on a number of occasions.
Perhaps Gelbspan could take the time to add this little nugget to the disinformation section of his web site.
Source:
Religious Leaders Rally at UN to Stop Global Warming. Press Release, Religious Witness for the Earth, November 10, 2003.
Tags: Global Warming
New York Times Screws Up Correction of Global Warming Story
Back on July 10, this site noted that The New York Times ran both a story, and editorial and a Bob Herbert column claiming that temperatures in Alaska had increased by 7 degrees Fahrenheit in only 30 years. That claim was completely bogus and on July 11, the New York Times issued a correction,
A front-page article on June 16 about climate change in Alaska misstated the rise in temperatures there in the last 30 years. (The error was repeated in an editorial on Monday and in the Bob Herbert column on the Op-Ed page of June 24.) According to an assessment by the University of Alaska’s Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research, the annual mean temperature has risen 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit over 30 years, not 7 degrees.
Nice of them to run a correction, except that these numbers also appear to be bogus. According to the Alaska Climate Research Center,
In their 11 July, 2002 Edition, the New York Times ran a correction of the value of 7°F as used in the 16 June article, 24 June op/ed, and mentioned in an 8 July op/ed as well. The corrected value is now 5.4°F over a 30 year period. We still find the value of 5.4°F too great by a factor of 2 for the 1971 to 2000 period, the last 30 years. However, the possibility exists that the value of 5.4°F is in reference to a temperature change in some other earlier 30-year period.
Maybe on their next round of corrections, the New York Times will get closer to the actual temperature change — apparently it corrects errors in the newspaper on an iterative basis, getting closer and closer to the truth with each successive version.
Sources:
Corrections. The New York Times, July 11, 2001.
In response to the New York Times Article of 16 June 2002 and Op/Ed of 24 June 2002 - Update. Alaska Climate Research Center, July 12, 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
New York Times Leads in Global Warming Nonsense
The New York Times ran an editorial today praising the California legislature for passing a bill that sets strict CO2 emissions standards for automakers. Typically, while it slams the Bush administration for ignoring global warming science, it repeats an outright falsehood about temperature increases in Alaska. According to The Times,
Then came a more narrowly focused but equally disturbing report by The Times’s Timothy Egan about Alaska, where an astonishing seven-degree increase in average temperatures over 30 years has led to melting permafrost, sagging roads, dying forests, unexpected forest fires and disruption of marine life. Even Ted Stevens, the influential Republican senator from Alaska who usually has little patience with environmentalists, is openly alarmed about global warming’s potential cost to his home state, which could run into the billions of dollars, and is privately even more alarmed by Washington’s indifference.
But according to the Alaska Climate Research Center, Timothy Egan’s June 16, 2002 report is pure bunk.
The article “Alaska, No Longer So Frigid, Starts to Crack, Burn, and Sag” written by Timothy Egan, stated that the average temperature has risen seven degrees in the last 30 years. This statement was repeated in an editorial by Bob Herbert of 24 June 2002. This statement is incorrect. The correct warming for Alaska is about 1/3 of the quoted amount for the last climatological mean 1971 to 2000 (see table below). It should be pointed out that the table presents data from first class weather stations, which are professionally maintained and generate high quality data. The three stations, Barrow, Fairbanks, and Anchorage, represent a cross section of Alaska from north to south. Further, Barrow, situated in Northern Alaska, which gave the largest temperature increase, is the only long-term first class meteorological weather station in Northern Alaska. All changes are based upon the time period 1971 to 2000 and are compiled from a linear trend.
The table mentioned show a 30-year increase of +4.16 degrees Fahrenheit for Barrow, +1.07 for Fairbanks, +2.26 for Anchorage and +2.28 for Nome.
The Alaska Climate Research Center site also features a nice graph tracking average temperatures in Fairbanks over the last century, which shows a +2.2 degree Fahrenheit increase over the last 100 years.
But why should The Times let the facts get in the way?
Sources:
California Leads on Warming. The New York Times, July 8, 2002.
In response to the New York Times Article of 16 June 2002. Alaska Climate Research Center, June 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
Coloring the Debate Over Global Warming
Over at TechCentralStation.Com, Nick Schulz has a classic example of how ostensibly objective reports on global warming are driven by political reasons to gloss over problems and disputes about global warming science.
Schulz points to the The National Assessment of the Potential Consequence of Climate Variability and Change, a report on global warming developed during the Clinton administration. This report was in turn used as the basis for the National Academy of Sciences’ recent Climate Action Report which has garnered no small amount of debate.
The original draft of the report included to graphs that showed computer projected temperatures for the United States based on two separate computer models developed at the Canadian Climate Center and the Hadley Center respectively.
Now the National Assessment wanted to use both models and presented maps showing future temperature. The problem is that along with not accurately modeling historic temperatures, the Canadian Climate Center and Hadley Center models disagree amongst themselves about future temperatures in the United States. The Canadian model predicts that the most extreme temperatures will occur in the western United States, whereas the Hadley model has the Western United States relatively cool with the highest temperatures concentrated in the Midwest.
The draft originally contained two multi-colored maps that made the different predictions of the two models obvious (these can be viewed in Schulz’s article).
Of course that can’t be tolerated, so in the final version of the report, those maps were taken out and replaced with maps that relied on a different color scale whose effect is to minimize to the naked eye the differences between the two projections (again, see the maps in Schulz’s article).
As Schulz writes,
This stunt throws into question the whole assessment process. Roger Pielke, a respected atmospheric scientist at Colorado State who was involved with the drafting process at the time, said, “I’m disappointed in the whole process. This has been the most closed, unhealthy scientific process I’ve ever been involved in.”
Sounds a lot like the scientific method has been replaced with marketing methods to sell global warming to the public.
Source:
Coloring Climate Change. Nick Schulz, TechCentralStation.Com, June 28, 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
Typical Al Gore Nonsense on Global Warming
Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, Jr. recently ripped in to the new head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Pachauri was rightly mystified.
Pachauri, of course, came to head up the IPCC after the George W. Bush administration worked behind the scenes to ditch former head Dr. Robert Watson. Gore did not approve of this change and in an op-ed published in The New York Times wrote,
The administration threw its weight behind the ‘lets drag our feet’ candidate, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri of New Delhi, who is known for his virulent anti-American statements.
That assertion was a bit odd, as Pachauri wrote in a letter to The New York Times in reply, given Gore’s past praise for Pachauri. In a 1991 speech, for example, Pachauri noted that,
Mr. Gore, referring to my ‘commitment,’ ‘vision’ and ‘dedication,’ said: ‘Pachy is the one person in the world who could bring us all here. He is known all over the community of concerned men and women as someone with the intellect and the heart.
Gore also acknowledged Pachauri in his book, Earth in the Balance as being “among the other scientists who have been helpful in giving me advice during the writing of this book.”
And yet it is people like Gore who attack global warming skeptics as being dupes who put politics ahead of science and principal.
Source:
Scientific Goring. Nick Schultz, TechCentralStation.Com, May 3, 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
Tuvalu Is Not Sinking
The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu made waves last year when it claimed that global warming was causing the gradual sinking of its land mass. Tuvalu, which is north of Fiji, wanted compensation from nations such as the United States to help evacuate the island. A new report suggests there was good reason to be skeptical of Tuvalu’s claim.
The bottom line is that Tuvalu is not going anywhere. Australia’s National Tidal Facility at Flinders University in South Australia, which is charged by the government of Australia to monitor sea levels in the Pacific, reports that there has been no significant rise in the Pacific Ocean.
NTF has had a monitoring station in Tuvalu since 1993 and over the last nine years, the sea level around Tuvalu had risen an average of 0.9 millimeters per year — that’s a whopping 0.03 inches per year or a grand total of .27 inches since 1993.
Going back and comparing current sea levels to those of 1978, the sea level has increased a mere 0.07 millimeters or 0.002 inches. Yeah, with that enormous amount it’s surprising the island hasn’t been swept away outright.
So where is the water coming from that Tuvalu complains about? There could be any number of reasons, but a likely explanation is that it is a combination of a number of things including the residual effects of World War II, the destruction of coconut trees, and pollution.
It turns out the United States used the main Tuvalu island as a base in World War II and created an airfield by essentially digging up about a third of the island. The areas dug up were never repaired, causing problems for Tuvalu’s water table. Combined with other related land degradation problems such as the chopping down of coconut trees which could affect the hydrology of the island, the problem is likely home grown rather than the fault of global warming.
Sources:
Global warming not sinking Tuvalu — but maybe its people are. SpaceDaily.Com, March 28, 2002.
No evidence Pacific rising to engulf Tuvalu, scientists say. SpaceDaily.Com, March 27, 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
Climate Change During Medieval Warm Period Very Similar to 20th Century Rise in Temperature
Science published a study last week claiming that a tree ring analysis found striking similarities between 20th century increases in global temperature and the Medieval Warm Period — a period lasting from 1330 AD to 1600 AD which saw similar increases in temperature.
Researchers examined ancient tree rings at 14 sties on three continents. According to Edward Cook of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
We don’t use this as a refutation of greenhouse warming, but it does show that there are processes within the Earth’s natural climate system that produce large changes that might be viewed as comparable to what we have seen in the 20th century.
Not surprisingly, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s climate models simply ignore the Medieval Warm Period. The models simply compare current temperatures to those of the immediately preceding pre-industrial societies. It is almost as if the Medieval Warm Period simply never happened as far as the IPCC is concerned (which makes it a lot easier to claim the current warming trend is completely unprecedented and, therefore, must be due to human-induced changes in the climate.
Source:
Tree Ring Study Shows Warm Cycles. Paul Recer, The Associated Press, March 21, 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
Global Warming Shatters Reporter’s Abilities to Do Simple Math
Reuters today released a hilarious account marking the collapse of the Antarctic shelf. According to Reuters,
The Antarctic Peninsular has warmed by 36 degrees Fahrenheit over the past half century, far faster than elsewhere on the ice-bound continent or the rest of the world.
Huh? If the Antarctic shelf had warmed 36 degrees over the last 50 years, the shelf would have collapsed a long time ago. So how did the moron who wrote this arrive at this figure?
Ah, you see, the actual warming was only about 2.5 degrees Celsius. Since 2.5 degrees Celsius is about 36 degrees Fahrenheit, the Reuters reporter concluded that this was a 36 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature.
Somebody needs to go back to college for a refresher course.
Note, by the way, that the collapse of the Antarctic shelf is not a result of global warming. As the Washington Post noted in its coverage,
Researchers and scientists who study the Antarctic Peninsula cautioned that there was little evidence to directly link the ice shelf collapse to the effects of global warming, which is induced by carbon dioxide and other man-made “greenhouse” gases. Rather, they are blaming a localized warming period that allowed melt water to seep into cracks and trigger massive fracturing of the ice when temperatures dropped.
Sources:
Global Warming Shatters Giant Antarctic Ice Shelf. Reuters, March 19, 2002.
Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses Into Sea: Scientists Split on Global Warming Role. Eric Pianin, Washington Post, March 20, 2002.
Tags: Global Warming
NBC’s Dishonest Coverage of Glacier National Park
In early September, NBC ran an intriguingGlobal Warming story. According to the story, the temperature in Glacier National Park had risen over the last century to the point where the famous glaciers were melting. Thanks to humanity’s impact on climate, this incredible natural wonder would soon disappear. While that made a compelling story, it turns out to be partly fictitious.
Writing for the Cato Institute, Patrick Michaels notes that interested parties can download detailed temperature records for western Montana, where Glacier National Park is located, on the Internet. The Western Montana Climatological Division maintains climate records for the state that begin in 1895.
The interesting thing about those records is that temperatures in Glacial Park today are almost identical to what they were 107 years ago. So where is the 3 and 1/2 degree increase that NBC claimed was melting the glaciers? This change comes by looking at the data beginning in 1950, when for a variety of reasons the temperature was far lower than it was in 1895.
As Michaels puts it, the anomaly is not that the glaciers are melting — they were almost certainly melting as soon as that part of the West emerged from a cold period that ended sometime in the middle of the 19th century. The anomaly is that this melting was temporarily slowed down around 1950. Michaels asks,
Why didn’t NBC check the regional temperature records for western Montana? Instead of recycling an old story, they could have produced a much better one — real news — by showing that Glacier’s’ glaciers have been melting like this for well over a century and are doing so without any net regional summer warming in the last 100 years.
Ah, but recycling nonsense is so much easier.
Source:
NBC twists facts, again, about Glacier Park. Patrick J. Michaels, Cato Institute, September 15, 2001.
Tags: Global Warming
Richard Lindzen on the NAS Global Warming Report
When the National Academy of Sciences recently released a report on global climate change it was widely hailed in the media as being incontrovertible proof that there is no serious scientific disagreement about global warming. As CNN’s Michelle Mitchell put it, “[the report is] a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room.” Richard Lindzen, one of the 11 scientists who prepared the report recently wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal saying that such claims were pure nonsense.
Lindzen wrote,
Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and agreement, the science is by no means settled. We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds).
But–and I cannot stress this enough–we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions.
Lindzen goes on to say that there is still far too little known to make the jump from the observed climate changes over the past 20 years to the broader claim that human activity will lead to the sort of dire forecasts predicted by many environmentalists.
Source:
Global warming: The press got it wrong. Richard S. Lindzen, Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2001.
Tags: Global Warming