The Climate Skeptic Playbook

Jason Steort’s “clarification” of his misleading National Review cover story is accompanied by a letter-to-the-editor by Pat Michaels. Mr. Michaels is the one who told Steorts that 2002 was a “high-water mark for Antarctic ice” based on a grossly inaccurate interpretation of a study by Curt Davis.

In his letter, Michaels backs away from that claim, but offers a new argument:

Every modern climate model predicts that Antarctica will gain ice in the 21st century, resulting in a slight lowering of sea levels (which will, nonetheless, be largely compensated for as slightly warmer surface temperatures cause ocean waters to expand).

This argument is technically correct, but highly misleading.

Most of the ice loss in Antarctica is occurring in the coast. It’s not happening in a regular, linear fashion that can be captured by existing models. As a result, most of this ice loss is getting missed by the models. Richard Alley, who is writing the upcoming IPCC report on these issues, explains in a 2005 paper published in Science magazine:

[T]he models used in these projections lack some of the physical processes that might explain the rapid rates of ongoing coastal changes and lack the oceanic forcing responsible for inducing these changes…

Michaels’ shift is a good example of how climate skeptics operate. Throw out an argument and see what happens. If that doesn’t work, try something else. The goal here is not to win the argument, but just to keep things in doubt.

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