A survey of media coverage of the monster heat wave

[Please post links to other MSM stories in the comments.]

It’s hot all over the East Coast.   Weather Underground offers this “plot of the difference between maximum temperature (the high for the day) and average maximum temperature in degrees F for July 6″:

Dr. Rob Carver, filling in for Jeff Masters on vacation in Maine (where I’ll be in August), asks “Is this heat wave due to global warming?”  His answer:

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As the United States, like much of the rest of the world, bakes in record, killer heat, climate scientists continue to refine our understanding of the dire future of global warming in the years to come. The United Nations has named the 831 scientists who will author the fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, to be published in 2013 with new model runs and observations of the ongoing destruction of our habitable environment. They do this work despite the endless assault from the fossil-fueled right wing, weathering death threats and media and politicians who ignore, downplay, distort, or lie about the science.

In yet another instance of this criminal deception, the First Post, a website of Great Britain’s The Week run by Tim Edwards, has claimed that new climate research from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry “is set to rock the boat again.” Edwards’ headline, promoted by climate propagandist Marc Morano, blares:

‘Runaway climate change’ ‘unrealistic’, say scientists

“Climate change skeptics might say the new study is yet another nail in the coffin of the IPCC report,” Edwards writes.

His headline and fevered speculation was based on a quote from the Max Planck researchers’ press release, which quoted Max Planck scientist Markus Reichstein saying, “Particularly alarmist scenarios for the feedback between global warming and ecosystem respiration (CO2 production) thus prove to be unrealistic.”

Via Twitter, Tim Edwards defended his piece as a “balanced story about an interesting development in climate change science.” However, by giving credence to conspiracy theorists who believe that mainstream science is a fraud, Edwards utterly misrepresented the research, which was published in a pair of papers in Science.

The researchers’ work in reality reduces uncertainties about how ecosystems respond to changes in temperature, precipitation, and solar input with respect to the carbon cycle, and will be very useful for improving the resolution of global climate models. Far from being “yet another nail in the coffin of the IPCC report,” this research is yet another building block in the vast edifice of climate science that underlies the IPCC work.

In an email interview with the Wonk Room, Dr. Reichstein excoriated the First Post story as a “very bad report,” saying that his research does not show that runaway climate change is “unrealistic.” In fact, Reichstein told the Wonk Room that “positive carbon-climate feedback is still very likely.”

This is indeed a very bad report about our research, strongly misinterpreted and with a unnecessarily sensational tone. In particular the statements in relation to the IPCC report are exactly opposite to what I said (and what is correctly reported in other newspapers). The 4th IPCC report is not challenged at all by our study, because it does not contain “alarmist” scenarios at all. On the contrary, the simulations therein still do not contain the carbon cycle feedback.

Our point is that now for the next IPCC report models are including this feedback and they are doing this in very different way, for example also with different temperature sensitivities. This will lead to a relatively large range of model predictions, a range which can hopefully be reduced by using our data for model improvement.

Reichstein’s research makes the speculative scenario of a feedback loop between warmer temperatures and faster CO2 production from plants less likely. However, as he explained to the Wonk Room, there are many other feedback loops that could give rise to runaway warming:

There are enough other feedbacks which are not touched in our studies. These include permafrost melting and subsequent CO2 and CH4 release to the atmosphere. The positive carbon-climate feedback is still very likely.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s predictions of climate catastrophe exclude these runaway feedback scenarios. “Even without a runaway feedback via the carbon cycle,” Reichstein said, agreeing with the IPCC assessment, “the warming will be substantial and critical.”

*featured article

PG&E opposes CA prop. to halt global warming law

California’s largest utility says it will oppose Proposition 23, the initiative that seeks to suspend the state’s landmark global warming law. Pacific Gas & Electric Company Chairman and CEO Peter Darbee said in a statement Tuesday that climate change could cost California’s economy tens of billions of dollars a year, with losses to agriculture, tourism and other sectors.

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Our guest blogger is Daniel J. Weiss, a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Richard Nixon would admire the latest smears levied by Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) against his opponent Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Toomey attacks Sestak’s support for climate legislation in a web video that falsely claims that his opponent is “far to the left of even most Democrats on cap-and-trade,” quoting Democratic senators and representatives who have raised concerns about proposals to reduce global warming pollution. “I pushed hard for the cap-and-trade bill” passed by the House last year, Sestak says in the Toomey video.

Watch it:

In fact, most of these legislators quoted in the video have actually voted for legislation to cap global warming pollution from power plants, oil-based fuels, and other large emitters. Joe Sestak’s support of American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), H.R. 2454 is well within the Democratic Party mainstream — 83 percent of House Democrats supported the bill. Seven out of Pennsylvania’s other eleven Democratic representatives — including Reps. John Murtha (PA-12) and Mike Doyle (PA-14) — voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), H.R. 2454, last year. Eight Republican representatives also voted for the bill, including current Republican nominees for U.S. Senate Mike Castle (R-DE) and Mark Kirk (R-IL).

A look at the positions of the eight Democrats quoted in the Toomey video demonstrate that Sestak’s support for pollution reduction is in the mainstream of the Democratic Party and in sync with the American people. Read more

Muir Russell investigation “did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC” and says of CRU, “Their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt.”

UPDATE:  Great Newsweek story, “Climategate: The Heat Is Off.”  A third inquiry clears British scientists of serious wrongdoing. What exactly was the scandal? A guide to the allegations of global warming shenanigans, and why they’re overblown.

On the allegation of withholding temperature data, we find that CRU was not in a position to withhold access to such data or tamper with it.

On the allegation of biased station selection and analysis, we find no evidence of bias.

The overall implication of the allegations was to cast doubt on the extent to which CRU’s work in this area could be trusted and should be relied upon and we find no evidence to support that implication.

On the allegations that there was subversion of the peer review or editorial process we find no evidence to substantiate this in the three instances examined in detail.

On the allegations that in two specific cases there had been a misuse by CRU scientists of the IPCC process, in presenting AR4 [the Fourth Assessment] to the public and policy makers, we find that the allegations cannot be upheld.

In particular, on the question of the composition of temperature reconstructions [in AR4], we found no evidence of exclusion of other published temperature reconstructions that would show a very different picture. The general discussion of sources of uncertainty in the text is extensive, including reference to divergence.

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… here’s an inane online poll on ClimateGate:

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Our guest blogger (via WR) is Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch.

Yesterday, the Obama administration proposed a sweeping plan to reduce power plant emissions that cross state lines and kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. The proposed Clean Air Transport Rule replaces the Bush administration’s so-called “clean air interstate rule” (CAIR) that was shot down by the courts because it permitted so much interstate emission trading that even some power companies filed suit. A federal court ordered EPA to fix the shaky legal grounds of the Bush plan. Power industry pollution remains so pervasive “” and so often blows from one state to another “” that it basically handcuffs state efforts to reduce pollution within a state’s borders. As EPA noted in a fact sheet:

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BP CEO Tony Hayward has flown to Abu Dhabi today, TP reports, possibly to raise funds and secure new investors from the region as his company’s stocks continue to plummet as a result of their oil disaster:

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Tea Party activists’ self-proclaimed mission is to demand lower taxes. TEA, in fact, stands for Taxed Enough Already. As a part of this anti-tax crusade, the Tea Party has vehemently opposed comprehensive health reform, clean energy legislation, and even mandatory garbage collection.

Given that these protesters take their name from the Boston Tea Party, which was organized around protesting an unfair tax benefit given to a massive British corporation, and that British oil giant BP’s oil disaster could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars, you’d think that Tea Partiers would be demanding that the government hold BP accountable and make the corporation pay the full costs for its bad behavior, so that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill.  Yet they aren’t, as Think Progress explains in this cross-post.

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