Why do a determined minority — often in positions of power — refuse to accept that climate change is happening despite the overwhelming scientific evidence?

A new study may provide a clue. Researchers at the University of Western Australia found that people who expressed faith in free-market ideology were also likely to reject scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that burning fossil fuels helps to cause it.

Free market philosophy makes the case that the market operates best when the government gets out of the way, but otherwise has no obvious connection to denying climate science. However, this scientific denial is not just limited to climate change:

Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer.

HIV and cigarettes do not have anything to do with climate change, yet those who placed their faith in the free market were skeptical of decades of research finding they caused AIDS and lung cancer, respectively. Laissez-faire doctrinarians also were not too sure about the causal role of CFCs in eroding the ozone layer.

The results go beyond scientific consensus. The researchers found that free market adherents tend to give more support to conspiracy theories about: a “world government,” the attacks of September 11 being an “inside job,” SARS being a government plot, the U.S. knowing about Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor, the Apollo moon landings taking place on a soundstage, Area 51 being home to alien bodies, and Lee Harvey Oswald not being a lone gunman, among other things.

Because this only tested correlation, it is impossible to say if free market ideology leads people to deny climate change, or if skepticism about scientific consensus leads to a belief that the government should stay out of the market, or if there is a third factor that leads to both beliefs. However, the third factor — more likely belief in conspiracy theories — lends the results added legitimacy.

The authors go on to state (behind paywall) the problem of climate denial in academic, yet clear terms:

Read more

“Suspect thought he could escape in backyard boat after hearing Gore speak on global warming.” — Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

As police surrounded Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Friday night, Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) mocked the deadly situation with a joke about global warming. Stockman, notorious for making tasteless jokes about LGBT issues, abortion and gun control, and President Obama, tweeted the following at 8:08 PM:

Evidently this joke about a suspect involved in the deaths of at least four people and the catastrophic injuries of dozens of others went too far even for Stockman, who later deleted the tweet.

After Tsarnaev was captured, Stockman used his Twitter account to praise law enforcement officials, Boston Mayor Tom Menino, and Obama.

by Brad Johnson, Campaign Manager for Forecast the Facts

by Emily Southard, Campaign Manager for Forecast the Facts

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) confronted by local climate activists at an April 2 town hall.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) has doubled down on his climate change denial in response to pressure from constituents and the local media. In a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed this Saturday, the newly appointed chair of a key climate science committee delivered a litany of climate denial tropes, concluding with the “political fact” that “the majority of Democrats” are climate deniers like himself:

Finally, let’s consider this political fact. In 2009, despite having control of the entire elected government, President Obama and the Democrats in Washington chose not to pass climate change legislation. And why not? Because even the majority of Democrats recognize that the science regarding climate change is uncertain, the suggested remedies would likely not work, and would be devastating to working families.

Stewart’s “political fact” is not only irrelevant to the scientific fact of human-caused global warming, it is also simply false. A Gallup poll released last week found that 78 percent of Democrats accept the overwhelming scientific understanding that human activities are the cause of climate change.

Only a few months into the job, Stewart’s rejection of science is hurting him at home. The Salt Lake Tribune castigated the new congressman for “ignoring the costs of drought, wildfires and storms like Sandy” when he claimed that the cure to climate pollution is worse than the threat. Scientists at NOAA, NASA and other agencies that are now under Stewart’s jurisdiction have repeatedly found that fiercer droughts, wildfires, and storms are the result of climate change.

Read more

An antique windmill stands at the gated entrance to Oyster Harbors in Osterville, MA, the location of Bill Koch’s family compound. (Photo credit: Southeby’s International Realty Inc.)

Is there a literary trope that draws more universal ire than the spoiled brat? There can’t be a single person on the face of the planet who empathizes with the likes of Eric Cartman, Wonka golden ticket holder Veruca Salt, or any of the charming young heroines of MTV’s twisted reality show, “My Super Sweet 16.” So it is with the wealthiest and most outspoken opponent of the nation’s first proposed offshore wind farm.

In a lengthy interview in the spring issue of Massachusetts-based CommonWealth magazine, petroleum coke magnate Bill Koch went full on climate-denier and finally came clean about his long-standing opposition to the Cape Wind project. The reason he has spent millions of dollars to block the project comes down to one simple point: he doesn’t want to ruin the view from his Cape Cod waterfront estate.

In the interview, Koch called the project “visual pollution” and explained that he “was buying more property on the Cape for a family compound and the windmills would interfere with the aesthetics.”

Would this be a good point to mention that the symbol of Oyster Harbors, the gated community in which Koch’s Osterville compound is located, is actually a windmill?

While Cape Wind proponents have long assumed NIMBY-ism was at the root of Koch’s position, this is the first time he’s come out and admitted it so publicly, even actually saying the words, “I didn’t want it in my backyard.”

Unfortunately for Koch, he doesn’t have final say over the project, because the wind farm won’t actually be built in the backyard of his compound, though it will be (barely) visible from his veranda. This visual simulation shows what the turbines would look like from Cotuit, the town next to Koch’s.

Cape Wind’s simulation of the post-construction view from Cotuit, MA, 5.6 miles from the nearest edge of its proposed wind farm. (Simulation by Cape Wind, LLC.)

Clearly Koch believes this is a visual blight worth spending millions to prevent. As of 2006, Koch had donated at least $1.5 million to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, an organization dedicated to stopping the Cape Wind project. Additionally, as of 2009 his corporation, OxBow Energy, was paying the $150,000 salary of the group’s executive director. And in the most recent interview, Koch said he had been supporting the group “more and more.”

Read more

Today, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held its confirmation hearing for Gina McCarthy, who was nominated by President Obama to be our next Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator. During the hearing, one of her chief inquisitors was Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), who is one of three doctors in the United States Senate and a long-time opponent of public health safeguards from dirty air, water and climate pollution.

Barrasso used this opportunity to indicate that he only applies the physician’s Hippocratic Oath to “keep them from harm and injustice” when the harm would occur to the profits of big oil and coal companies. Furthermore, he frequently denies the ever-strengthening scientific understanding that human activity is responsible for climate change. It’s like a physician denying that smoking causes cancer.

Barrasso began his opening statement today by falsely accusing the Obama administration and the EPA of “making it impossible for our coal miners to feed their families…. These people are heroes and they deserve better than what they are getting from the EPA.” The facts say otherwise — the average number of coal-mining jobs under the Obama administration has been over 15 percent higher than under George W. Bush. Moreover, McCarthy has received a lot of support from industry officials including American Electric Power, a company that relies heavily on coal.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that Barrasso has provided protection for polluters’ profits over public health concerns. Let’s examine some of the most extreme attacks from the good doctor:

Read more

Republicans tried and failed to pin anything on Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, Gina McCarthy. When she appeared before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as President Obama’s nominee to be the next EPA Administrator, some Senators focused on substance, and others focused on denying climate change or asking about email addresses and instant messenger.

First some reality. Echoed by several of his colleagues, Senator Bernie Sanders’s opening statement broke through the rhetoric and clarified the debate over McCarthy, EPA, and climate change. After hearing Senator Barrasso’s hyperbolic opening statement about “extreme emissions rules” and the “war on coal” (in fact, the industry is growing under President Obama), he cut to the chase.

This is not a debate about Gina McCarthy. Senator Barrasso made it very clear what this debate is about. It is a debate about global warming, and whether or not we are going to listen to the leading scientists of this country who are telling us that global warming is the most serious planetary crisis that we and the global community face — and whether we are going to address that crisis in a serious manner.

And in essence what Senator Barrasso has just said is “no” — he does not want the EPA to do that. He does not want the EPA to listen to science. What he wants is us to continue doing as little as possible, as we see extreme weather disturbances, drought, floods, and heat waves all over the world take place. So let me go on record as saying I want the EPA to be vigorous in protecting our children and future generations from the horrendous crisis that we face, from global warming.

Across the dais, the rhetoric had a different focus. Senator Boozman said that he is an optometrist by trade, and is therefore “familiar with the scientific world.” He used this familiarity to question EPA data release and personal confidentiality practices. McCarthy politely answered his question with a promise to ensure he had all the data he needed, ostensibly to run climate models on his own time.

Several GOP Senators focused their questions on transparency, particularly the ongoing debate over secondary email addresses used by past EPA Administrators. As Chairwoman Boxer noted, the practice of having a secondary email address was started by EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman because Administrators can get up to 41,000 emails per day. Even so, McCarthy stated she has never used her personal account for official EPA business.

In fact, when Senator David Vitter asked her about her use of instant messenger, she replied that one of the things about being 58 is that she has no idea how to use IM. A large portion of many GOP Senators’ questioning revolved around these irrelevant email issues, instead of cleaning up the environment, climate change, or air pollution.

No hearing about the EPA would be complete without some denial of climate change, and while Senator Inhofe certainly did his best to fill that role, Senator Sessions stood out in terms of the substance and the condescending manner in which he asked whether it was really getting warmer.

Read more

Earlier today at a hearing on approving the Keystone pipeline, Buzzfeed reports that Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) took a slight detour into biblical science.

I don’t think it’s a secret that I’m a proponent and supporter of the Keystone pipeline, so it’s somewhat redundant for me to ask too many questions. I would point out that people like me who support hydrocarbon development don’t deny that climate is changing. I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what’s causing that change without automatically being either all in that’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural.

I think there’s a divergence of evidence. I would point out that if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change and that certainly wasn’t because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.

Leaving aside all theological debates over when the flood happened in the narrative of the Bible itself, there is a place for theology and there is a place for science. Apocryphal details of one do not constitute proof in the other. Current carbon dioxide levels have not been this high for the last 15 million years — it has taken millions of years for carbon to be turned into fossil fuels, and the planet’s climate was very different back then, it is true. But the planet has also not seen such an exhuming and burning of carbon in such a dedicated way in such a small period of time … and we are seeing the effects in spiking CO2 levels, increasing temperatures, growing energy in the hydrological cycle, and sea level rise.

While some Senators might discount the idea that 97 percent of climate scientists have concluded that humans are causing climate change, most people trust the experts.

Speaking of Senators, there was a hearing yesterday on the other side of the Capitol that illuminated a similar Congressional tendency to assume expertise over things best left to experts.

Yesterday Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of Pacific Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Last month, he said that changing climate “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment” in the Pacific region. During the hearing, the ranking member — who had earlier said “I can’t recall a time in my life when the world has been more dangerous” — brought up the crucial national security issue of climate change in his first question. However, this senator was the senior senator from Oklahoma, James Inhofe.

What followed was an attempt to lead the witness that backfired. Senator Inhofe tried to get Admiral Locklear to take back his statement about the threat of climate change. Locklear responded that while of course North Korea and other powers were threats, he was talking about long-term threats posed by sea level rise and natural disasters. When he got to the efforts to plan for this with our allies, Inhofe realized he would not be getting his desired answer and cut him off. He then asked a completely different question about energy security, to which the Admiral replied that yes, it would be great to produce all our own energy. Inhofe may want to look beyond oil, because the U.S. has nearly 1.6 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, while consuming about 19.2 percent of the world’s total energy.

Senator Inhofe’s constituents in Oklahoma are disproportionately feeling the effects of climate change according to a recent report and eight counties in Oklahoma have been hit by ten or more weather disasters since the beginning of 2007.

Transcript and video of the exchange after the jump.

Read more

If the UK Telegraph does not retract and apologize for James Delingpole’s latest piece of pure hate speech, then it is declaring its own publication policies a sham.

Actual photo of Nuremberg trial that accompanies latest Delingpole piece with actual caption, “Not pictured: Monbiot, Flannery, Mann….”

If you ever needed (more) proof that the professional deniers are driven by a mindless rage devoid of any actual science, I urge you to read James Delingpole’s latest piece.

It will nauseate you — consider yourself warned. But I think it’s important to dissect this hate speech in detail because Delingpole seems to think that hate speech isn’t hate speech if you just use rhetoric — the figures of speech, like metaphor.

Having spent a quarter century studying rhetoric and having just published a well-received book on this very subject — Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga — I think I can safely say that is bullshit, though most likely only metaphorical bullshit (see below).

You may recall Delingpole’s 2011 meltdown on the BBC, where they got him to admit he is a hand-waving know-nothing: “It is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers because I simply haven’t got the time…. I am an interpreter of interpretations.” This pieces makes that meltdown look like the height of lucidity.

The piece is also worth examining closely because I think it is indicative of how the deniers and disinformers really feel — and we’ll know if that’s true if none of them denounce it.

The headline is “An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists.” Delingpole is going to lecture us plebes on our native tongue.

Under the headline is the photo above, which is one of the popular pictures of the post-WWII Nuremberg trials in which Nazis were tried for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” The Telegraph‘s caption is simply, “Not pictured: Monbiot, Flannery, Mann….” That would be George Monbiot, Tim Flannery, and Michael Mann.

Yes, that’s right, this isn’t hate speech just from Delingpole — senior editors at the paper must have signed off on all this. Oh, but it gets much worse.

The piece opens (emphasis added):

Should Michael Mann be given the electric chair for having concocted arguably the most risibly inept, misleading, cherry-picking, worthless and mendacious graph – the Hockey Stick – in the history of junk science?

Should George Monbiot be hanged by the neck for his decade or so’s hysterical promulgation of the great climate change scam and other idiocies too numerous to mention?

Should Tim Flannery be fed to the crocodiles for the role he has played in the fleecing of the Australian taxpayer and the diversion of scarce resources into pointless projects like all the eye-wateringly expensive desalination plants built as a result of his doomy prognostications about water shortages caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming?

It doesn’t matter how many times the Hockey Stick is independently verified, the anti-science crowd just hate, hate, hate it and Dr. Mann with a force that is beyond reason. Note that he offers no evidence against Mann or Monbiot or Flannery here — mainly because there isn’t any.

Apparently it’s not enough for Delingpole to smear people for wanting to avoid catastrophe by reducing CO2 emissions — he even wants to smear them for adaptation. Now we can’t even plan for climate change without being subject to fact-free hate speech from the deniers.

Oh but you see, Delingpole thinks he can write such smears as long as he puts them in the form of a question and then follows with this (emphasis added):

It ought to go without saying that my answer to all these questions is – *regretful sigh* – no. First, as anyone remotely familiar with the zillion words I write every year on this blog and elsewhere, extreme authoritarianism and capital penalties just aren’t my bag. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it would be counterproductive, ugly, excessive and deeply unsatisfying.

The last thing I would want is for Monbiot, Mann, Flannery, Jones, Hansen and the rest of the Climate rogues’ gallery to be granted the mercy of quick release. Publicly humiliated? Yes please. Having all their crappy books remaindered? Definitely. Dragged away from their taxpayer funded troughs and their cushy sinecures, to be replaced by people who actually know what they’re talking about? For sure. But hanging? Hell no. Hanging is far too good for such ineffable toerags.

What more proof is needed that hate speech is the “logic” of deniers?

By the way, this trick of “pretended denial” — smearing someone by putting it in the negative (“I’m not calling my opponent a liar, but …”) — is so old the Greeks classified it as a figure of speech 25 centuries ago! And here it is indeed just rhetorical denial — as evidenced by the absurdist addition of “*regretful sigh*” and, even worse, “the mercy of quick release” and “Hanging is far too good.” Anyone who “read English at Oxford” as Delingpole snearingly asserts a few sentences later would know that.

Let’s take a quick look at the alleged “terms and conditions for Telegraph.co.uk and all associated websites”:

In submitting material to us, you warrant that any material you submit:

… (6) is not obscene, threatening, menacing, offensive, defamatory, abusive….

If Delingpole’s piece doesn’t count as “threatening, menacing, offensive, defamatory, abusive” then it is quite safe to say that nothing does. It should be retracted, the Telegraph should issue an apology and then fire him.

Delingpole then doubles down by bringing in — what else? — a Nazi war criminal metaphor (emphasis in original):

Read more

On his radio show this week, Rush Limbaugh was excited to find a 13-year-old caller who discovered “lots of evidence” that global warming is a hoax. 13-year-old Alex from Wilmington, Indiana said evidence he discovered at his local library made it “really easy” to disprove the science.

Limbaugh was so impressed — and genuinely shocked — that climate denier books exist at the library, he offered the kid an iPad. Here is an excerpt of the exchange:

RUSH: You mean…? Hold it just second. Alex, you’re at the health food store, and it’s cold out there. It’s March. You’re there in March, it’s cold, and two people in there are surprised that it’s cold because it’s global warming outside?

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: And they still concluded, “Well, we’re still in global warming”?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: But they were shocked. This is hilarious. You know, Alex, there are none so blind as those who will not see, and that’s what you’re running up against. Where did you find this evidence? How hard was it for you to research?

CALLER: It wasn’t that hard to learn it. There is pretty much a lot of evidence that you can find. I personally just went to the local library and looked up books. That’s what I did.

RUSH: You went to the library?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: You didn’t use a computer?

CALLER: No, I didn’t. Well, yeah, my mom got me one article from the computer. Yeah.

RUSH: Wow. I’m surprised you find evidence of this at the library. That’s heartening. Why did you want to do this? What made you doubt the people who believe that there’s global warming?

CALLER: Well, over the radio we listen to different things. I’ve heard lots of evidence that man-made global warming is a hoax. And since I’m doing speeches, I thought it was a very interesting topic. I want to learn more about this. I guess I just always doubted that. There’s so much evidence that global warming is not man-made.

It is little surprise that Alex stumbled onto climate denier talking points, since nearly all climate denier books have ties to conservative think tanks. Internal documents obtained by ThinkProgress last year revealed that the right-wing, Koch-funded think tank Heartland Institute developed a curriculum teaching children that climate science is a controversial matter. On the other hand, a mere 24 peer-reviewed articles reject global warming, compared to a staggering 13,926 scientific articles that substantiate it.

If Limbaugh thinks a 13-year-old is where to find the truth about climate science, perhaps he can next invite a 12-year-old to discuss evolution.

Yet many top Republicans in the Senate and House subscribe to the same view. The climate zombie caucus has a wide net of Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), former ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee James Inhofe (R-OK), House Science Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX), and House Science subcommittee chair Chris Stewart (R-UT), and many others.

You may recall a couple years ago the climate disinformers trumpeted the (very) short-term slowdown in sea level rise. We can hardly wait for their posts on the recent speed up — JR.

Figure 1: Mean sea level (in centimetres) since 1993 obtained by satellite altimetry observations. Annual and semi-annual signals have been removed to reveal the long-term trend. The glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) of 0.3mm per year is added to account for the slumping of ocean basins. Image from the AVISO website.

By Rob Painting, via Skeptical Science

The Earth is warming which is driving the ongoing thermal expansion of sea water and the melt of land-based ice. Both processes are raising sea level, but superimposed upon this long-term sea level rise are what scientists at NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) have coined, “potholes and speed bumps on the road to higher seas“. (See their follow-up paper – The 2011 La Niña: So strong, the oceans fell, Boening 2012).

Since mid-2011 a giant “speed bump” has been encountered. In roughly the last two years the global oceans have risen approximately 20 millimetres (mm), or 10 mm per year. This is over three times the rate of sea level rise during the time of satellite-based observations (currently 3.18 mm per year), from 1993 to the present.

So does this mean land-based ice is undergoing a remarkably abrupt period of disintegration? While possible, it’s probably not the reason for the giant speed bump.

Pot Holes and Speed Bumps
The largest contributor to the year-to-year (short-term) fluctuation in sea level is the temporary exchange of water mass between the land and ocean. This land-ocean exchange of water is coupled to the natural Pacific Ocean phenomenon called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – which affects weather on a global scale. (See Ngo-Duc 2005, Nerem 2010, Llovel 2011, Cazenave 2012 & Boening 2012 – linked to above):

Read more