Suckered, CNN’s Jack Cafferty asks viewers “Has this winter affected your belief in global warming?”
Newsblusters has approvingly reprinted this bit of classic anti-science illogic from Julie Seymour at the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute:
The news media constantly misuse extreme weather examples to generate fear of global warming, but when record cold or record snow sets in journalists don’t mention the possibility of global cooling trends. While climatologists would say weather isn’t necessarily an indication of climate, it has been in the media, but only when the weather could be spun as part of global warming.
As if. First off, since it isn’t cooling, it would be illogical if not outright dishonest for any major media outlet to do a story on “the possibility of global cooling trends” (see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira “” “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous”). As AP reported:
“The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. “Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.”
And as NOAA reports here, both sets of satellite data show a warming trend in the lower troposphere.
The NASA data (see figure above) also shows warming as does the UK Met Office dataset, which isn’t as accurate — see Finally, the truth about the Hadley/CRU data: “The global temperature rise calculated by the Met Office’s HadCRUT record is at the lower end of likely warming.”
And when you look at where 90% of the human-caused warming was expected to go “” the oceans “” you find steady warming over the past several years (see “Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!“).:
Now, in spite of that unequivocal warming — and contrary to the complaints of the anti-science crowd — the media underplays the connection between global warming and extreme weather [see CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave "Hell (and High Water) on Earth" story "” never mention climate change]. And that’s in large part because the anti-science crowd has been working the refs (see “why the anti-science disinformers try to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather“).
What was doubly laughable about about Seymour’s post was the very next paragraph:
In Iowa, temperatures are 30 degrees below normal according to the Des Moines Register. That’s a near-record low. Beijing is facing the coldest temperatures in decades according to Australia’s The Age.
So the media is supposed to use non-record temperatures as evidence of a non-existent cooling trend.
And remember, when the anti-science crowd isn’t spending its time complaining about the media’s supposed lack of coverage of global cooling (based on some local temperature station data showing cooling over a few days), it is asserting that the same exact temperature station data is untrustworthy — see Must-read NOAA paper smacks down the deniers: Q: “Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?” A: “None at all.” Yes, they want the media to quote a dataset they themselves don’t believe to make an argument that isn’t true.
Finally, plenty in the media have been suckered by the disinformers’ siren song. Take CNN’s Jack Cafferty. Please.
The ever helpful you-don’t-know-Jack asks his viewers, “Has this winter affected your belief in global warming?“ He repeats a litany of it’s-cold-in-January weather reports and then rehashes the Mojib Latif misreporting without even citing it:
Meanwhile some of the world’s top climate scientists suggest this winter is only the start of a worldwide trend toward cooler weather, which could last for 20 to 30 years. They base their predictions on changes in water temperatures in the oceans.
The scientists say much of the global warming in the last century was actually caused by these oceanic cycles when they were in a “warm mode”… as opposed to the current “cold mode.” They suggest there will be cooler summers ahead too.
It’s the kind of research that could undermine lots of what we’ve been told about the warming of the Earth being caused only by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Except, of course, none of the world’s top scientists suggest anything like that. Quite the reverse, actually — see “FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC.” See also Media Matters Right-wing media run with Mail article falsely suggesting climate expert predicts “mini ice age.”
The moral is, if you say something long enough and loud enough — even if it is illogical disinformation — there will always be some in the status quo media to repeat it.
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How can these people know we’re setting record low temperatures? I thought the temperature record was unreliable!
Funny how only some parts of the US matter on the issue of “record lows.” Here in New York, we haven’t been anywhere near record lows over the past month. The averages have actually been slightly above normal the past week. Guess we’re not the “real” America, though!
“The moral is, if you say something long enough and loud enough — even if it is illogical disinformation — there will always be some in the status quo media to repeat it.”
Amen. Sigh!
Perhaps if we just ignore the anti-science crowd the inattention will drive them back into their caves? Of course, we know that isn’t true.
And though we can never win the war of words we probably can’t just step away from the fray.
“The moral is, if you say something long enough and loud enough — even if it is illogical disinformation — there will always be some in the status quo media to repeat it.”
And there will always be some in the status quo media to report that X has made you believe it, where X is *not* the media.
For example, the “emails” are supposed to have damaged the public’s trust (not the media’s sensationalistic, conspiracy-mongering, alternate-reality-manufacturing approach to the stolen emails); “this winter” is supposed to be the possible belief-altering agent, not the shoddy reporting on it.
Why don’t they ask: “Has our shoddy reporting misled you and made you really confused?”
“Funny how only some parts of the US matter on the issue of “record lows.” Here in New York, we haven’t been anywhere near record lows over the past month. The averages have actually been slightly above normal the past week. Guess we’re not the “real” America, though!”
And the Left Coast has been warmer than average, too, after a brief cold snap a month ago.
But then again we know that the “real america” of Sarah Palin et al has long excluded us …
It needs to get to minus 10 F to kill the woolly adelgid that is devastating the Eastern Hemlock, and here in Eastern MA, we haven’t hit anything near that, nor any record lows. Sorry hemlocks.
The media seems only to draw upon what it wants (translation: what it’s advertisers demand!) I couldn’t believe that Katie Couric presented a segment on dimishing water supplies around the globe without mentioning GW. And now the US Governmental Copenhagen attendees are being accused of overspending taxpayer money, with Exxon-funded denier James Inhofe receiving special attention for “paying his own way.”
Off-topic, but Leif, I’d love to hear your scientific analysis of energy imbalances and earthquakes; surely there’s a connection in the land as well as in the ocean!
Mossy, #6: First I am flattered that you think that I can offer a “scientific analysis” of anything as I have no paper to back that assertion. I have however made a life long “hobby” of understanding scientific principals. Any understanding I might pass on could best be described as from the “bottom up”, not the “top down.”
With that provision I would say, “minimal to none.” Thou I use A-Bombs as a energy example that does not imply any explosive energy just a soft fuzzy universal “fart” if you will. Not enough to even shake a dish but you know something is happening.
The other day I used the very same graph Joe presented above, in its original and an edited forms to ask what the deniers would have said around the late 1950′s after a roughly 15-year temp. decline, and how astonishingly wrong they would have been:
http://www.grinzo.com/energy/index.php/2010/01/11/climate-whether-or-not/
And while we’re talking about extremes, perhaps it’s time to remind our denier friends of the heat wave that’s strangling Australia at this very moment, and threatening “massive crop losses”:
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201001/s2789453.htm
Maybe some climate scientists who are effective communicators could offer a professional growth seminar to people in broadcasting that would educate them, ’cause we can’t go on like this – ignorant reporters and talking heads setting the agenda for discussion. They need to be educated. Doubt they took climatology or meteorology classes in college. But seriously, I fault academics for failing to emerge from the ivory towers now and then to try to help the general public understand their disciplines.
Mossy, #6: There is one observation that I would like to make about the relation of land and water and GW if I may.
Cold air sinks, warm air rises. I believe that that statement will withstand even the fiercest Anti-Science folks. So…
Land cools faster than water. Still with me A-S folks?
The earth is a “closed system.” Fairly obvious in my book.
What goes up must come down in a closed gravitational system like the earth. Have we lost anybody yet?
Now the tricky part. (I just had to do that!)
The continental winter air mass from the polar region over North America as well as the eastern hemisphere flows south, (it cannot go north), and thus is replaced by the warmer air over the water separating the two land masses. That warmer air mass must be flowing north along the sea “gateway” to cool in the Arctic night to fall and flow south again as cold air over the continents. Fluids cannot flow if volume cannot be replaced with something. (Yes, air is a “fluid.” Think overturned glass of water lifted from sink.)
Now add the extra energy of global warming into the equation and vola! Stronger inflow of warm moist air thru the gateway, (NW experiencing record warm) and stronger out flow, Cold Arctic air, reaching further south, (with added moisture to fall as SNOW), than average and a tad more vigorously than “normal.” (Florida even!)
Needless to say that there are numerous localized “weather” anomalies, rotational forces etc. to confuse the issue but that in IMO, is the big picture.
To add more to the point that all the current focus on cold weather is being seen through a central north american and southern prism due to cold being pushed southeast from the far north …
The NY Times today reported that it’s raining at Whistler, the alpine venue for the upcoming Olympics, with temps near 40 (too warm to make snow). It’s just as warm at the freestyle ski venue for the upcoming Olympics, and that they’ll probably shut the latter down now to preserve as much snow as possible for the Olympics.
Up here in Seattle I wait and wait for the snow level to get low enough for snow in our mountains. If these patterns persist for a another month dhogaza is right: Vancouver 2010 will be a decidedly non-wintery scene for the olympics. Its quite with as warm as it is here that the downhill skiing will be run in the rain.
Neil Cavuto probably wouldn’t run that though….
Bill R: I am also from the NW.
Perhaps we can have a “Downhill Mud Run!” We can get creative!