or, All Credentialed Journalists are Sex Abusers

Meet the Depressed host Chuck Todd, sans brain.

Chuck Todd, on a recent episode of Meet the Press, highlighted the issue of global warming and climate change. He unapologetically made it clear that he wasn’t interested in hearing from people on the opposing side of the scientific issue, stating:

“We’re not going to debate climate change, the existence of it. The Earth is getting hotter. And human activity is a major cause, period. We’re not going to give time to climate deniers. The science is settled, even if political opinion is not.”

This is what’s called a “strawman” argument, where you argue against something your opponent never even claimed.

I cannot think of a single credentialed, published skeptical climate scientist who doesn’t believe in the “existence” of climate change, or that “the Earth is getting hotter”, or even that human activity is likely a “major cause”. Pat Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Judith Curry, John Christy, and myself (to name a few) all believe these things. That journalists continue to characterize us as having extremist views shows just how far journalism has fallen as a (somewhat) respectable profession.

What if I claimed that all journalists are sex abusers? Of course, no reasonable person would believe that. Yet, I would wager that up to half of the U.S. population has been led to believe that climate change skeptics are “deniers” (as in, Holocaust deniers), about whom journalist Ellen Goodman said 12 years ago,

“Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers”

At least my hypothetical claim that “journalists are sex abusers” is statistically more accurate than journalists’ claims that we skeptical scientists “deny” this, that, and the other thing (for those allegations, see Mark Halperin, Matt Lauer, Tom Brokaw, Charlie Rose, Tavis Smiley, Michael Oreskes, and others).

The fact is that even if humans are, say, 60% responsible for the warming of the global ocean and atmosphere over the last 60 years (which would be consistent with both the UN IPCC’s and Todd’s phrasing), the lastest analyses (Lewis & Curry, 2018) of what this would mean leads to an eventual warming of only 1 deg. C from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (we are currently about halfway to that doubling). That’s only 1/3 of what the IPCC claims is going to happen, and an even smaller fraction of what the ratings-boosting extremists who journalists like to trot out will claim.

A Nuance Chuck Todd is Ill-Prepared to Discuss

Journalists are notoriously under-informed on science issues. For example, let’s look at the claim that recent warming has been human-caused. It is easy to show that such attribution is more faith-based than science-based.

Between 2005 and 2017, the global network of thousands of Argo floats have measured an average temperature increase of the upper half of the ocean of 0.04 deg. C. That’s less than 0.004 C/year, an inconceiveably small number.

Significantly, it represents an imbalance in energy flows in and out of the climate system of only 1 part in 260. That’s less than 0.5%, and climate science does not know any of the NATURAL flows of energy to that level of accuracy. The tiny energy imbalance causing the warming is simply ASSUMED to be the fault of humans and not part of some natural cycle in the climate system. Climate models are adjusted in a rather ad hoc manner until their natural energy flows balance, then increasing CO2 from fossil fuels is used as the forcing (imposed energy imbalance) causing warming.

That’s circular reasoning. Or, some might say, garbage in, garbage out.

The belief in human-caused warming exceeding a level that what would be relatively benign, and maybe even beneficial, is just that — a belief. It is not based upon known, established, and quantified scientific principles. It is based upon the assumption that natural climate change does not exist.

So, journalists do a lot of talking about things of which they know nothing. As Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz said in 1939,