Where do certain global warming skeptics get their information from?

Question

I've just flicked through some of the most recently asked questions in this section, they're littered with errors, distortions, misrepresentations, half truths and in some cases - outright lies.

We all make mistakes and have opinions - that's fine. However, each of the following statements were given as fact, no attempts were made to qualify them, none were substantiated.

I appreciate some of the statements could have made due to errors and misunderstandings, that's to be expected given the amount of inaccurate information that's been produced, but in many cases I believe they were made as deliberate attempts to deceive.

Question global warming by all means but do so openly, honestly and responsibly (as some on this forum do). Resorting to underhand tactics demonstrates an inability to rely on factual evidence and shows contempt and disdain for other users.

Why do some skeptics feel it necessary to adopt this apparoch and where is the erroneous data originating from?

Here are some of the errros from some of the questions (the list could easily have been a lot longer).

● The dark ages were hotter than it is now

● When the Vikings landed on North American there were no glaciers on Greenland

● The caribou and the polar bears are doing better now than ever.

● All weather cycles are app: 40 years

● NASA has found that the polar ice caps on Mars are melting

● just over 2% of the total carbon emissions are contributed to human activity

● we just happen to be in a period of [natural] global warming

● One Chinese power station produces more CO2 in a week than Britain's cars do in a year

● Co2 has increased from 280 ppm (parts per million) to 360ppm this century

● MAN has contributed about . 000001 (that's 10 MILLIONTHS OF ONE (1) DEGREE)

● the Globe isn't really warming

● There's record cold in the southern hemisphere.

● The sun is causing warming

● from 1910 to 1940 shows a higher rate of warming than we have now

● the current [decadal] rate of change looks to be close to half that [0.2°C]

● The last 10 years have been cooling

● No reputable scientist claims that the temperatures are still increasing

● co2 is not causing warming

● South America is experiencing multi year of far below average temperatures

● Mt st helens put out more co2 in 10 minutes than man has put out in 150 years

● scientist work for the governments

● Shame on environmentalists, thirty years they used the same crap science for global cooling

SOME RESPONSES TO ANSWERS:

POBERT: All opinions are valid, I effectively stated this in the question. However, being a climatologist my opinion is perhaps more educated than that of some other people. You'll find there's very few experts who disagree with global warming, I've worked with hundreds since the 80's and know of only a handful of skeptics. The precise (instrumental) record is limited to approx 150 years but we have an accurate record going back many thousands of years.

JIM: Very few people, be they alarmists, skptics or undecided know very little of the science and this leads to a great many mistakes from both sides. I made a list of skeptics errors, a similar list or alarmists errors could be made although in truth I think you'd find it considerably shorter and more based on errors than deliberate distortions, fabrication and lies.

BUBBA: I like the term 'obstructionists' I think that could accurately be applied to some people.

VLADOVIKING: You’ll see from my previous posts that I’m not a fan of Al Gore, I never refer to him, I never refer people to him or his movie as I consider there are better and more impartial sources.

RANDALL: Please see my comments to Ron C.

KRISTINE: The data were updated because of advances in technology, it’s still being updated and there may be more ‘hockey sticks’ in the future. Let’s take things to a ridiculous extreme regarding the MWP and LIA and assume that they were 10°C warmer and cooler than present temperatures, it would still be that temps are changing faster now than during these periods. If we accept what some skeptics are claiming, namely that the MWP was about 0.3°C warmer than now, it means that temps are presently rising 17 times as fast (and that’s a figure based on a long term mean, if I’d have used the standard, shorter, mean it would be more like 30 times as fast).

RON: The work you linked to by Dr Loehle is a fantastic piece of work. I’ve worked on similar comparisons myself and they’re mind-numbingly boring. What he’s produced there is a very worthwhile document.

However, there is a problem. Not in Dr Loehle’s work but perhaps in your interpretation. Briefly, Loehle’s graph ends in 1980, if it were continued to 2007 it would show current temps to be approx 0.2°C higher than the MWP.

I’ll explain. Loehle uses 2000 years worth of data from which he takes a mean to create a data range from 1 to 1995AD, to this is applied 30 year smoothing giving a final range of 16 to 1980AD – this is what’s plotted on the graphs.

Because of inconsistencies in the 18 source datasets he has had to calculate a base period unique to his graphs, unfortunately his text doesn’t provide an absolute temperature value thus making it incomparable with the conventional temperature records (in short, his zero is not the same as zero on other graphs). It’s not a problem, it just means there’s more numbers to calculate.

The last value on his graph (1980) has an anomalous ave value of approx 0.18°C and an extreme of 0.49°C. Using his process of a 30 year running mean applied to an average across more recent datasets shows that in 1980 the ave global temp anomaly was 0.085°C, by 1992 (the most recent year to which a 30 year mean can be applied) the temp anom was 0.308°C, by interpolation we can deduce a value for 2007 of 0.565°C i.e. 0.308 + ((0.308 – 0.085 / (1992-1980+1)) x (2007-1992)) = 0.565. By following Loehle’s method we find that since 1980 the ave global temp has increased by 0.480°C (0.565 – 0.085).

If we extend Loehle’s graph to 2007 we get an anomalous average value of approx 0.660°C (0.180 + 0.480) and an extreme of 0.970°C (0.490 + 0.480). The peak of the MWP has an anomalous average value of approx 0.450°C and an extreme of 0.759°C. Thus, temperatures are currently about 0.2°C higher then the climax of the MWP.

What’s especially pleasing here is that I’m currently working on what we believe to be the most accurate, extensive and user friendly global temperature record. Our calculations put 1992 as the time when temps exceeded the peak of the MWP, Loehle’s method puts the year at 1991.

Answer 1

I think a lot of it has to do with a presupposition that the current warming is not caused by humans.

Once one starts with this presupposition, it can skew one's understanding of information to which he is briefly exposed. For example, a person hears that one of the polar ice caps on Mars is melting, assumes this is evidence that humans are not causing warming on Earth, and thus concludes "NASA has found that the polar ice caps on Mars are melting."

There are many right-wing blogs which also distort the information in this manner. A few examples:

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/2006/12/global_warming_on_mars.html
http://digg.com/space/Absolute_Proof_Global_Warming_Is_Melting_Polar_Ice_Caps_On_Mars
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=39
http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/blog/global-warming-is-melting-ice-cap-on-mars.html

Some skeptics purposefully distort the information because they are incapable of forming a valid scientific argument to support their position. A good example is Jello's double error of claiming that current CO2 concentrations are 360 ppm and that this is only a 0.0008% increase (in reality it's 387 ppm and a 38% increase).

I too have noticed the utter lack of accurate information and valid scientific arguments coming from the AGW skeptics recently, which is why I asked these questions:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ahj_9Ts6XCPlEPR8x0ZiSSPsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071119090411AA89TH4
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgS2qOApqjAAlFJiUIa8Hyfty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071116093411AAu0ooz

It seems like one needs to have a lack of understanding of the basic science in order to be a global warming skeptic these days.

Answer 2

I wish you could have just ask, 'what do you make of this new German report ?' instead of couching it your irrational views of skeptics. What does this skeptic think about it. Nothing, I have not seen the report or even read much on it. Why? I don't need another HAL9000, or in this case HANS9000 telling me the AE-35 unit is going to fail. Just off hand, the presumption is that heat is being absorbed then blended into the deep ocean water, but that would somewhat be contradicted by the data in the ARGO program which has indicated no warming in the oceans. Do the authors claim that this absorption increase is caused by the synchronization of decadal and multi decadal oscillations? If so, what would be the frequency of the new global oscillation, and how did it relate to observed temperatures in the 20th century and prior? What did they use for their CO2 forcing, and why that value? Do the assume stratospheric and tropospheric aerosols will remain at historic lows or return to "normal" values? Then there is the water vapor/cloud cover issue. Too many questions about the work, so I guess well have to wait for it's release to the general public to see what they did.

Answer 3

Trevor, okay some of these are obviously false and clearly misstatements of another argument, i.e. the statement regarding Mars warming.

Others are not errors at all and have good science to support them (even if poorly stated).

Regarding it being warmer in the past. Dr. Craig Loehle did an interesting temperature reconstruction without tree ring data (because the NAS panel advised that strip bark trees are not temperature proxies and should not be used as such) he found the Medieval Warm Period to be global and 0.3C warmer than the late 20th century.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025

Regarding the polar bears, it is well-established that the population is more than 20,000 now as compared to about 5,000 in the 1950s.

The claim the Earth warmed more quickly from 1910 to 1940 than recently is probably true. We will not know for certain until Anthony Watts completes his work of photographing weather stations. But if you remove Hanson's unwarranted adjustments to temperatures during the early 20th century, this is probably accurate even today.

There are several other statements that are defensible. If you really want to make fun of ridiculous statements, make sure they are ridiculous first.

Answer 4

Mostly talk radio, which is merely right wing disinformation propaganda. Anyone who starts off by saying "warming has always occurred throughout earth's history".. has no idea what they are talking about. It's as if they are so stupid that they don't think climatologists already know that and have taken that into consideration.

I would like to make a prediction- in 50 years Rush Limbaugh will be remembered merely as the radio guy who tried to tell everyone that man made global warming wasn't real. They will make documentaries about it and everyone will watch and shake their heads in amazement.

Answer 5

This one I find particularly puzzling:

● The last 10 years have been cooling

Because not only is the temperature trend since 1998 irrelevant, it's =positive=, as you can easily see in the below graph:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/t1998.jpg

Since Dr. Jello is so fond of bringing this up, I wonder if he'd mind terribly explaining to me what he's talking about?

Answer 6

Obscuring and making up facts is the only way obstructionist have to support their claims. If they are unwilling to read and objectively evaluate information, the fall-back is to scream "liberal media - all scientist are liberals - government is out to get me - I know an extremist website that agrees with me so 20 years of research by prominent scientist and the scientific majority of the world must be wrong!"

It is pretty useless to even mess with them. I think people can see through it fine. The more they post, the more foolish they look.

Answer 7

Did you know that global warming makes the days shorter?

Answer 8

I shall not waste the time to address all your "myths", but its interesting that the 1990 IPCC report contained a graph showing the Medival warm period to be just that, a period warmer than today. It also showed a substantial cooling till the 1850-75 period. Then, in the third IPCC report, they have the famous (and debunked), hockey stick which completely contradicts their first report. How can such a MAJOR piece of evidence be so completely wrong when the science is supposed to be "over"?

Answer 9

Alarmists are also full of inaccuracies, and are far less informed generally than are the skeptics IMO. Just read any post and you will see that those that accept that global warming is caused by humans generally know very little of the science. The last thread I read had numerous people link global warming to pollutants that attack our ozone. There are some that have learned as much as they could, reading everything on global warming that they could find but they seem unwilling to look at the subject objectively, unwilling to admit that there might be benefits to any warming, and unwilling to admit that there are limits to present knowledge.

Answer 10

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