Climate denying researcher received over $1 million from fossil fuel industry – Salon.com.
Category: Climate Change
All the recent declarations that 2014 was the hottest year on record seems to have prompted a spate of panic denial among climate change contrarians, denialists and ideologues.
We’ve had a declaration of one of the “most extraordinary scandals of our time” from UK climate science manglers Christopher Booker and James Delingpole.
The accusation is that climate scientists have been “fiddling” the world’s temperature data with the express motivation of showing the world is warmer than it really is.
This was sparked by a blog from a retired accountant and climate sceptic who “discovered” that data from three temperature stations in Paraguay had been altered when NASA compiled its global temperature record.
Fellow Guardian blogger Dana Nuccitelli has a rundown.
But more on this in a bit, because I’d like to turn to the button-down mind of Maurice Newman, Tony Abbott’s handpicked chief business advisor.
Newman, who thinks human-caused climate change is a “myth” and a “delusion”, also bought into the great new conspiracy that climate scientists are fiddling temperature data.
But Newman also decided he would try and pin the deaths of thousands of British pensioners at the feet of renewable energy policies and “political elites” who back action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Writing in The Australian (where else?), Newman claimed:
It is a fact, according to British charity Age UK, 3.5 million elderly Britons are at risk from winter cold. It is estimated 25,000 “excess winter deaths” across Britain will result from the inability of the poor to afford power because renewable energy policies have driven it beyond reach.
…
Back in the real world, the poor are dying of the cold while the political elites and their friends bask in the warmth of cosy conferences, taxpayer subsidies and research grants.
Did Age UK really say those excess winter deaths would result from “the inability of the poor to afford power because renewable energy policies have driven it beyond reach”, as Newman claimed?
I sent Newman’s article to Age UK and asked them about this claim. They sent me a statement from the charity’s director Caroline Abrahams. She said:
The sad fact is that many of these deaths could have been prevented. Cold homes, caused by a number of factors including poor insulation and high energy costs, are a major cause of excess winter deaths.
In the short term we would urge all older people to claim the benefits they’re entitled to so they can afford to turn the heating up and stay warm.
However the only long-term solution to this problem is an ambitious government-led programme to bring all our housing up to a high energy efficiency standard.
Notice there’s no mention of “renewable energy policies” which Newman claimed the charity had blamed for driving energy prices higher.
Advertisement
In fact, the charity says the key to reducing the risk of death from cold among pensioners is to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
Newman is not only misrepresenting the charity’s position, he appears to be making up positions that the charity simply does not hold.
But what about those high energy prices in the UK mentioned by the charity?
Research from the UK’s government-backed Committee on Climate Change found that between 2004 and 2011 the average annual energy bill in the UK went up from £610 to £970.
Only £30 of that £360 increase was due to costs related to low-carbon power generation.
Most of the increase, the analysis said, was down to higher gas prices and network costs (maintaining poles and wires).
In my view, Newman’s attempt to pin the blame for the deaths of UK pensioners on renewable energy policies is either disgustingly dishonest or pathetically sloppy.
Of course this isn’t the first time Maurice Newman has misrepresented research to service his paranoia and conspiracy theories over climate change.
We’ve played this game of whack-a-mole before.
Hottest years and warming trends
In January, analysis of global temperature data from NASA found that 2014 was likely the hottest year on record, although the fine print shows that statistically it tied for first place with 2010 and 2005.
Tying for NASA’s fourth hottest year were 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2013.
According to NASA’s analysis, the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred from 1998 onwards (the year at which many ‘sceptics’ claim, wrongly, that global warming stopped).
The UK’s MetOffice also put 2014 as a tie for the warmest year on record.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency had 2014 as outright warmest, as did the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (there’s a good explainer on different measures of global temperature at NASA’s Earth Matters blog).
Analysis of satellite measurements of the lower troposphere also had 2014 in the top ten warmest years.
As the World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Michael Jarraud pointed out, the ranking of any individual year isn’t as important as the longer term trend.
Fourteen of the fifteen hottest years have all been this century. We expect global warming to continue, given that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the increasing heat content of the oceans are committing us to a warmer future.
Conspiracy time
All this talk of hottest years put the climate denialist community into a tailspin, with Booker, Delingpole, Newman and others claiming the whole thing was a scam.
Again I’d refer you to Dana Nuccitelli’s analysis. But let’s be absolutely crystal clear about what is being alleged.
The allegation is that climate scientists in agencies across the world are altering temperature data taken by some thermometers and that this alteration is motivated entirely to make it look as though the world has been warming more than it really has.
There is not a shred of evidence for this global conspiracy. There is no secret tape of climate scientists and meteorologists huddled together agreeing how this elaborate scam will be pulled off. No email trail where scientists discuss the records they’ll choose. No grand scam hidden in the methodology.
At the same time, there is more than ample information in the public domain – where it has been for many years – showing how global temperature records are put together from the millions of pieces of data generated by thermometers across the planet on land and floating in oceans.
Neither do these so called ‘sceptics’ (generally they are not sceptics) mention the rapid and accelerating melting of ice sheets at both poles, the heat build up in the world’s oceans or the rising sea levels – all of which are clear signals of a warming planet before you’ve even shot a glance at a thermometer.
What some conservative commentators and bloggers are doing is denying or discarding this information and replacing it with innuendo and a conspiracy theory for which they have no evidence.
The reason there’s no evidence for it is because this conspiracy theory is pathetic and embarrassing bunk.
In August 2014 we saw this exact same evidence-free conspiracy theory play out after Australia experienced its hottest year in the Bureau of Meteorology’s record going back to 1910
The claim then was the same – that scientists had been selectively employing a technique with the deliberate aim of making things appear warmer
Again, it is not a secret that some temperature readings do undergo changes – and those changes can return higher or lower values.
As a NASA spokesperson explained to Media Matters, “the largest adjustment in the global surface temperature record occurs over the oceans” and this “actually lowers global temperature trends”.
Why change data?
But why would you selectively change some data collected by thermometers when you analyse it?
When networks of weather stations were set up around the world, they were not designed to be a long-term record of the climate. Rather, they were there to record the weather from one day to the next.
Let’s say that you have a record of temperature readings from a weather station at, oh I don’t know, Denierville (not an actual place).
In Denierville, temperature readings are written down every day for decades, with only the occasional missing day.
For that temperature to give a true reflection of Denierville’s climate over the decades, you need to know a few things.
For example, was the temperature taken at the same time each day? Was the thermometer always in the same place, or was it moved across town or around the corner in a shadier spot? Have trees or buildings popped up around the thermometer, or have they been taken down?
How about if your thermometer was out in the open air in full sun but sometime ago was placed inside a box or a piece of standard equipment (like a Stevenson Screen), biasing the new temperatures low? Would you allow for that?
What if you want your Denierville temperatures to be part of a network of climate records? Were your thermometers calibrated and checked in the same way as all the others?
Unless you make allowances for things like this, then the raw data you plot on a graph becomes unreliable as a consistent record of Denierville’s climate over time.
What if you plot all the temperatures and notice a jump in the data where things suddenly get hotter or colder?
Do you ignore that, or do you check to see if the thermometer was changed or moved or if other temperature stations in the region also show the same jumps around the same time?
If the other temperature stations don’t show the same jumps, suggesting its not a natural change but something else, what do you do then?
Should scientists just ignore all of this or make an allowance for it?
If you decide to allow for changes like this, are you part of a global conspiracy, or are you just doing solid science?
As climate scientist Professor Neville Nicholls explained to me last year:
A scientist can’t ignore those effects. It’s not science to just go ahead and plot that raw data.
But what if you did plot the raw data anyway?
A member of the team of global temperature analysts at Berkeley Earth, Zeke Hausfather, was curious.
Does it confirm the suspicions of the climate science denialists? I’ll let you decide.
A new report by the Climate Council of Australia says it would have been “virtually impossible” for 2013 to be the hottest year in the country’s record without man-made emissions in the atmosphere.
The independently-funded group used new modelling to look at the odds of extreme heat events occurring, with and without man-made emissions.
A computer simulation of the atmosphere showed that climate change tripled the odds that the heatwaves of 2012/2013 would occur as frequently as they did and doubled the odds that they would be intense as they were.
More than 123 temperature records were broken over that summer.
Professor Will Steffen said the record temperatures of 2013 were caused by man-made emissions.
“What were the odds of that happening without the human carbon pollution, and what were the odds with human carbon pollution? The answer is quite striking,” he said.
“The answer is that year, 2013, being the hottest year in Australia ever, was virtually impossible without human emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“That’s conclusive evidence in my view that human driven emission of greenhouse gases were the primary cause of 2013 being the hottest year on record.
“In other words, it wouldn’t have happened without them.”
The report also looked at heatwaves in Australia and found they were becoming longer, hotter, and occurring more frequently.
Professor Steffen said it highlighted the importance of taking action to reduce emissions.
“If we don’t get on top of this, what you consider an extreme heat event now would be a normal summer by the middle of the century,” he said.
That’s conclusive evidence in my view that human driven emission of greenhouse gases were the primary cause of 2013 being the hottest year on record.
Professor Will Steffen, author of Climate Council Report
“By 2090 when my grandkids are around, that’s going to be a cool summer.
“You don’t want to live in that world.”
The chief councillor at the Climate Council, Professor Tim Flannery, said the report allowed scientists to quantify the effect of human impact on extreme weather events.
“It gets down to the issue of responsibility,” Professor Flannery said.
“Who or what is responsible for these extreme weather events that we’ve been seeing in Australia, particularly the heatwaves?
“This report tells us that we are responsible, that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we hope to have a better climate into the future.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the report drew on research conducted and published by the Australian Government.
The statement said the Government believed clearly and categorically in the science, and was committed to achieving its carbon emission reduction targets.
Tony Abbott has denied that China’s plan to launch a national carbon trading market shows he is out of step internationally on climate change, claiming his Direct Action policy is getting “more and more support” in Australia and abroad.
On Wednesday a Chinese government official said a national carbon market was likely to be launched by the middle of next year, along with an emissions cap for six sectors: power generation, metallurgical, nonferrous metal, building materials, chemicals and aviation.
“We hope to kick off the national market in summer of 2016, starting with a three-year trading phase before the market becomes fully functional in 2019,” said Jiang Zhaoli, a senior official within the National Development and Reform Commission’s climate change department.
But Abbott dismissed the suggestion that China’s actions showed the Coalition decision to dump Australia’s carbon pricing scheme in favour of his Direct Action plan ran against the tide of international efforts to reduce emissions.
“In fact, more and more countries are going down the direct action path,” the prime minister said in Melbourne on Friday. “Direct action has more and more support, here and abroad.
“Don’t underestimate what we are actually doing. By 2020 we will have reduced emissions by 12% on 2005 levels, on a per capita basis they are down 30% – this is amongst the world’s best outcomes.
“Sure, other countries talk about what they might do down the track, but we are actually delivering lower emissions for a better environment.”
Abbott was in suburban Melbourne to tour a woodfiller business he said had benefited from the repeal of Australia’s carbon price last year through lower power costs.
Advertisement
The Direct Action plan that replaced carbon pricing involves the distribution of voluntary grants to businesses that wish to lower their emissions. The government insists this policy will easily achieve Australia’s target of a 5% reduction on emissions by 2020, on 2000 levels, although several bodies have questioned this confidence.
China, by comparison, has launched seven regional carbon markets since 2013, with Qingdao, a city of 9 million people, planning to join the scheme. It’ i estimated the pilot carbon markets cover around a third of China’s overall emissions, although the lack of a unified national system has led to variations in each of the markets.
The plan to introduce a national scheme will unify these regional markets, subject to approval by Chinese state authorities. The national market would eclipse the EU’s emissions trading scheme, which is now the world’s largest.
In September China put its name to a list of 73 countries that signalled support for putting a price on carbon. This list includes Germany, France, Britain, South Africa and New Zealand. It also includes US states such as California and Massachusetts, as well as more than 1,000 businesses.
Australia, which was the first country in the world to repeal a carbon price, is now working out its position on emissions cuts beyond 2020. Crunch UN climate talks in Paris this year will set out a new global deal on lowering emissions, with the aim of avoiding more than 2C of warming compared with pre-industrial times.
Analysis conducted by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology states that Australia could warm by up to 5.1C by 2100 unless action is taken to curb emissions. This level of warming would have major ramifications for agriculture, human health owing to increased heatwaves, and coastal infrastructure owing to rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
Bjorn Lomborg‘s latest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal resurrects repeatedly demolished distortions of fact to downplay the real and increasingly documented threats of climate change. His trademark tactic is to acknowledge that climate change is real and human-caused, only to then dismiss the solutions — reducing emissions and promoting clean energy now — as unnecessary or infeasible.
Fortunately, his longstanding fight against climate action is failing to persuade the public, as an overwhelming majority of Americans understand that climate change is a serious threat and that we’re already feeling the impacts. More to the point, they support action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, especially through continued expansion of clean energy and new rules for coal-fired power plants.
Mr. Lomborg has relied on similar distortions for his arguments many times before, even drawing censure from the Danish government for his “perversion of the scientific method.”
After the release of Lomborg’s “deeply flawed” book The Skeptical Environmentalist, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science remarked that Lomborg’s work was a testament to the “vulnerability of the scientific process … to outright misrepresentation and distortion.” One researcher decided to fact-check Lomborg’s claims and had so much material that Yale published it as a book: The Lomborg Deception. In the book, Lomborg’s many sloppy citations and misleading myths are thoroughly debunked, but that hasn’t stopped him from repeating the same general arguments in years since. When it comes to climate, he insists over and over: Don’t worry; be deceived.
The Facts:
- Climate change is happening now, and current temperature trends are in line with projections — with 2014 the latest year to break a record for average global temperature.
- Poor communities and developing countries are at higher risk from the impacts of climate change than are developed countries.
- Climate change has exacerbated extreme-weather events; adaptation is expensive. The influence of climate change on extreme weather is not measured by extrapolating from costs but by changes in the weather itself.
- Clean energy is the fastest-growing energy sector; the IEA predicts clean energy will receive nearly 60 percent of the $5 trillion to be invested in new power plants over the next decade.
Models accurately projected current rising temperatures. Lomborg cites the long-debunked notion that scientists and models have overestimated the rate of warming since the especially hot El Niño year of 1998. While Lomborg says the period from 1998 to 2012 saw “90% less temperature rise than expected,” this is simply false. From 1998 to 2012 temperatures continued to rise within the range of expected increase, by 0.05°C (0.09°F).
The difference between model estimates and observations is completely accounted for by natural variability and fits within the range of modeled uncertainty. The reality is that there is no inherent bias in climate models that make them overestimate the effects of human activity. A recent study that combined 114 possible 15-year trends since 1900 found there was nothing statistically biased in the way that model data differed from observed measurements of global mean surface temperatures. According to the study’s co-author, Piers Forster, “cherry picking” the most recent 15-year interval to refute climate-change modeling is misleading and obscures the long-term agreement between the models and measurements.
What’s more, short-term variation does nothing to change the fact that we are experiencing a dangerous rate of global warming, with nine of the 10 hottest years on record occurring since 2002 and NOAA and NASA officially declaring 2014 the warmest on record. So Lomborg’s insistence that we not worry about climate flies in the face of the record temperatures we’re experiencing.
Poor people and developing countries are at greater risk and will benefit from mitigation. While Lomborg attempts to sound well-meaning and concerned about poverty, it is difficult to find any evidence that his work does anything to alleviate poverty aside from critiquing climate-change policy. There is no contradiction between lifting poor people out of poverty and cutting carbon emissions. In fact, many developing countries have created their own mitigation plans in response to a growing understanding of the acute threats they face.
Developing countries are also at greater risk because weather can gravely affect their economic activities such as farming and tourism. So any effort to help reduce the negative impacts of extreme weather on these basic economic functions of developing countries would help their economic development.
Recent research has shown that extreme weather hampers economic growth in developing countries to a much greater degree than in developed countries. While Lomborg suggests that we should focus on relieving poverty, that’s the opposite conclusion of actual researchers, who say their study is evidence that we should limit warming to less than 2 degress C to protect developing economies. Specifically, the study author said that on a business-as-usual path (like that for which Lomborg advocates), “The average annual growth rate in poor regions is cut from 3.2% to 2.6%, which means that by 2100 per-capita GDP is 40% below reference.” Contrary to Lomborg’s claims, fighting climate change will in fact ensure that developing countries are able to grow their economy and prosper.
Extreme-weather events are worsening, and the cost of adaptation is high. Lomborg picks up a thoroughly debunked line of attack from Roger Pielke Jr. regarding hurricanes and the impacts of extreme weather. Pielke’s ploy is to first cherry-pick data, then “normalize” it for development, basically blaming the increase in losses from weather on increased wealth. That sort of analysis is so flawed that it caused FiveThirtyEight to apologize for publishing Pielke and recruit a more qualified scientist to rebut Pielke (who hasn’t written any other climate pieces for the site since his response to the controversial post).
For more details, see our previous rebuttal of Pielke on his claims regarding extreme-weather damage and costs. Why Lomborg would choose this particularly well-debunked myth to propagate is a testament to his willingness to deceive his audience in service of the “Don’t worry” mantra.
Renewable energy is cheap and growing much more quickly than fossil fuels. It is odd that Lomborg would criticize solar and wind power as being too expensive yet, in the next sentence, advocate for new battery technology to facilitate their development. In reality, clean energy is cheap and getting cheaper, and in many areas renewables have reached grid parity with fossil fuels, meaning they are no more expensive than the dirty fuels Lomborg would have us continue to rely on. Developing nations are adopting clean energy quickly — at twice the pace as rich nations. So clearly they are more than “expensive, feel-good measures,” as Lomborg claims, if they are quite literally bringing light to the most impoverished areas of the planet. It turns out that renewables are so promising that they seem to be leapfrogging fossil fuels, which is why Bangladesh leads the world in small solar-power home installations. The success story of renewables is, contrary to Lomborg’s opinion, something to be happy about.
Clean-energy growth has been booming, with strong future growth predictions. Wind, solar, and geothermal have all been expanding rapidly, with at least 17,000 megawatts of these three energy sources — equivalent to about 17 new nuclear reactors, enough to power around 13 million homes — under construction in the United States in 2013. China installed 36,000 megawatts of hydro, solar, wind and nuclear in 2013 and is on course to add more generating capacity from renewables by 2035 than the U.S., Europe and Japan combined. In 2013 more than a fifth of the world’s electricity came from renewables, and clean energy accounted for over half of all net additions to global power capacity. Twenty percent of the world’s electricity is hardly “imperceptible” in terms of climate impact, as Lomborg claims renewables will remain for decades.
Far from alarmist, the growing attention to climate change simply recognizes the facts. Yet the Wall Street Journal prefers to give its readers the same old song and dance: Don’t worry; be happy. Unfortunately, the evidence simply does not fit — unless you’re Lomborg, whose work shows a consistent “perversion of the scientific method,” and who is backed by the fossil-fuel industry.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (CT&P) – Sources close to Senator James Inhofe are telling the Washington Post that the politician from Oklahoma is so stupid that he cannot find his ass even when he utilizes both hands.
“The man is as dumb as a box of rocks,” said an aide to the senator, on the condition that he remain anonymous. “He has roughly the same IQ as a tapir running around in a South American rain forest. I’m relatively new to the staff, so I don’t know how long he’s been like this, but let me tell you, the man has trouble crossing the fucking street by himself. It’s a classic case of ‘lights on-nobody home.’”
The revelation is all the more alarming because as a result of the November elections Senator Inhofe has assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
“It’s like making Barney Fife secretary of defense,” said Dr. Frank Black of the Banzai Institute in Holland Township, New Jersey. “This guy actually believes that the Bible somehow refutes man-made climate change. He’s as bad as those savages in the Middle East that want to take us back to the 7th Century. He belongs in a mental institution or a third grade science class or anywhere other than the U.S. Senate. The man is a menace.”
Senator Inhofe has become famous for his idiotic statements in the past, such as the time he compared the rise of gay rights to the sinking of the Titanic. Most Americans have up to this point considered him another Tea Party type clown with the native intelligence of cement block, but many are now alarmed that he is chairman of an important committee.
Inhofe’s first act as committee chairman was to take the floor and drone on and on about how anthropologic climate change is a giant hoax perpetrated by scientists who just want funding to continue their lavish lifestyles.
“Man made climate change is just a giant conspiracy like the moon landings and the JFK assassination,” said Inhofe. “We can’t trust these scientists at all, they’re just like doctors. Everyone knows it’s better to pray to God to be healed rather than see a doctor,” raved the moron from Oklahoma.
The senator used a video made in his garage to support his arguments. The video began with a list of people who don’t agree with the vast majority of climate scientists who say human-caused carbon emissions are contributing to climate change. Inhofe said he has compiled a list of 4,000 “renowned scientists” who disagree with the 97% of climate scientists who actually have looked at the data. Inhofe’s list actually has 650 people-not 4,000, and some of whom are television meteorologists, amateur gynecologists, pizza delivery dudes, and fry cooks at McDonalds.
Conversely, one of the most recent peer-reviewed studies on the state of climate science showed that out of 4000 abstracts from peer-reviewed papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of global warming — 97 percent of these endorsed the point that it was human-caused.
In the video, Inhofe says this is “just not true.” “Whoever heard of someone reviewing a paper on a pier?” said Inhofe. “Piers are for fishing.”
“With people as dumb as Inhofe in positions of power in the federal government, well, things don’t bode well for any meaningful action on climate change for at least the next two years,” said Dr. Black. “It really cements the image of the U.S. Senate as being ‘old, white, male, and stupid.’ One thing about it though, with guys like this and those idiots in the Tea Party on television every week, the Democrats are sure to do well in 2016.”
Washington: Citing unchecked climate change and the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons, scientists on Thursday moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight.
The scientists created the clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the Earth.
“It is now three minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Benedict, the executive director and publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at a news conference in Washington, DC. “The probability of global catastrophe is very high. This is about the end of civilization as we know it.”
Three minutes is the closest to midnight the clock has been since 1984 during the Cold War. The closest it has ever been to midnight — two minutes– was in 1953, when the hydrogen bomb was first tested. The closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it’s estimated that a global disaster will occur.
“In 2015, unchecked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernisations and outsised nuclear weapons arsenals pose extraordinary and undeniable threats to the continued existence of humanity,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said in a statement.
“World leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.”
The clock is symbolic and has been maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947. The group was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project.
Before Thursday, the Doomsday Clock was most recently moved ahead from six to five minutes to midnight in 2012, also in a response to nuclear proliferation and climate change.
“Human influence on the climate system is clear,” Richard Somerville of the Bulletin said at the conference on Thursday. “Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer than any preceding on record.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence that the effects of climate change are having a devastating impact on present and future Australia, Kirsten Tona reports that the Abbott Government continues to ignore the evidence.
By 2070, Australia’s average temperature will rise by anything up to five degrees Celsius, our rainfall will be significantly lower and our sea levels higher. This data comes from the CSIRO, not from the-sky-is-falling conspiracy theorists, so …. why is the Australian Government not preparing?
It is a sometimes uncomfortable paradox of democracy that while governments—elected—come and go, much of the real work of the state is done behind the scenes by unelected bureaucrats and institutions.
But, there are times we have reason to be grateful for that.
While the current Prime Minister of Australia is on record as saying that the arguments behind climate change are “absolute crap”, Australia’s premier scientific body, the CSIRO, has been quietly beavering away, using proven scientific methodologies to produce realistic models of what climate change may look like in our country.
And the news is: hotter, and drier.
Temperatures will go up, rainfall down. Ocean acidity levels will rise, as will the incidence of certain extreme weather events.
REAL FIGURES
Global sea levels rose by about 17 cm during the 20th century, and are projected to keep rising, as are ocean acidity levels.
Air and ocean temperatures across Australia are now, on average, almost a degree Celsius warmer than they were in 1910, with most of the warming occurring since 1950. The Climate Change In Australia website use 24 of the world’s best models to predict what Australia might look like in 2030, 2050 and 2070.
The best projections have average temperatures rising by 1-2.5° within 50 years, if carbon emmissions are brought under control, soon. The worst projections say average temperatures in Australia will rise by 5° within 50 years.
Climate change is real, and here to stay.
Climate Change in Australia is an initiative of the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology in partnership with the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, through the Australian Climate Change Science Program.
Governments come and go, and party policy is based on a wide range of political factors, strong scientific research being merely one. Or, should we say, occasionally one.
But the CSIRO and the BOM have to deal with the evidence. And they have to try, current government & party policy notwithstanding, to educate the public about their findings.
To this end, they have produced an unfeted, but extremely useful, set of reports, analyses, even posters.
But…who has been educated? Have you seen these projections? Where are the news stories?
How much public money was spent on this very important set of projections, and why are the public not being given these posters, being referred to this website? If you are planning where you and/or your children/grandchildren are going to live in the future, wouldn’t you want to see this?
LIMA CONFERENCE
Meanwhile Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is in Lima trying to defend her party’s policies on climate change.
There is some controversy around her attendance at this, a precursor to a more important conference being held in Paris, at the end of 2015. Reports say that when Bishop first proposed attending the Lima talks, the “prime minister’s office” rejected her request. (“The prime minister’s office” is often, in journalist-speak, used as code for “Peta Credlin”).
It is said that Julie Bishop was furious about this, and took it to a full meeting of Cabinet, where her attendance was approved.
However, “the prime minister’s office” then insisted she only attend the talks under the tutelage of known climate skeptic, Trade Minister Andrew Robb.
SIAMESE FIGHTING FISH
Now it is being widely reported that Peta Credlin and Julie Bishop have had a massive falling-out. (Although, it must be noted, Bishop herself denies this).
But climate change, the melting of the icecaps, rising sea levels, reduced rainfall and global warming are surely too important to be left in the hands of those who would ignore the science in favour of political grandstanding.
Or in the hands of their advisors, who frequently concentrate on the sale of the message rather than the predicament of the people.
Or…in the hands of the Murdoch press, who are encouraging the populace to blame the alleged rift between Bishop and Credlin on Tony Abbott, no longer, it seems, news.com.au’s blue-eyed boy.
NEWSPEAK
In 2003, George W. Bush, then President of the USA, was advised by notorious Newspeaker Frank Luntz to emphasise the notion that the science of climate change was unsettled, uncertain. Not because it really was uncertain, but because that was what the public already believed.
In a quite shockingly cynical memo, Luntz told Bush Snr: “The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science … Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community.
He wrote: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.”
REALSPEAK
The CSIRO do not think there is no consensus on the science of climate change. The CSIRO think climate change is already happening. So do the Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency and the Australian Climate Change Science Program.
So too, it seems, does Julie Bishop.
But Peta Credlin doesn’t. And if she doesn’t, Tony Abbott doesn’t. And so, our commitment to emission reduction and other important planks in the platform of preparing for continuing climate change, is left in the hands of people who are unelected, or who seem to care a lot more about being elected, than about actually governing.
This article was first published on Newpolitics.com.au as Government ignoring climate change while the planet burns and has been reproduced with permission.
I am wondering how Andrew Bolt is feeling with the release of a trio of new studies in two days which confirm how bad the earth’s fever is.
In November 2013 Bolt wrote an article titled “Fighting the global warming religion”.
He stated that “Atmospheric temperatures have remained flat for at least 15 years.”
The following graph shows the tricks used by deniers like Bolt who pick their data to suit their argument.
Aside from the usual tactics of choosing a very hot year as your starting point, and using a short time period rather than observing long term trends, a report from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirmed that 2014 was the hottest year ever since reliable records started being kept in 1880—and the results weren’t even close.
Average global surface temperature worldwide was 14.58º C—surpassing previous records set in 2005 and 2007—and making 2014 1.1º C hotter than the average for the entire 20th century. And before you say 1.1º C doesn’t seem like much, think about whether you’d prefer to run a fever of 38º or 40º. The planet is every bit as sensitive to small variations as you are.
Bolt also says “there has been an unexpected pause in warming of the atmosphere, with the IPCC blaming the deep ocean for hiding the missing heat where it can’t easily be found. We’ve seen about 0.85 degrees of warming over the past 130 years (which hasn’t seemed to hurt, I think). That warming slowed dramatically over the past 15 years – to just 0.05 a decade, or virtually zero.”
According to the journal Science, marine life forms are growing sicker, with a “major extinction event” a very real possibility. All through the oceans, the signs of ecosystem breakdown are evident: the death of coral reefs, the collapse of fish stocks, the migration of species from waters that have grown too warm for them to the patches that remain cool enough.
On sea level rises, Bolt says “so far we’ve probably had just 19cms in 110 years. Turns out the median sea level rises tipped under the four IPCC scenarios for 2100 are between just 26cms and 30cms, with a very upper limit of 82cms under the most alarming scenario.”
A study in Nature looked at sea level rise in both the periods from 1901 to 1990 and from 1993 to 2010. It found that sea levels had risen more slowly than believed in the 90 years that followed 1900, and much faster in the 17 years from 1993 to 2010—close to three times as fast per year from 1.2 (+/- 0.2) mm/year to 3.0 (+/-0.7) mm/year.
Whilst this may not seem like a lot, a single centimetre of water globally is a lot of water. (in non-metric terms a single inch of water spread around all of the planet’s oceans and seas represents two quadrillion gallons of water.) The recent faster rate of rising may also affect predictions for the future.
Bolt also disputes the warning that a rapidly warming climate could affect the quality and quantity of available food.
“Sheer alarmism. Fact is that extra carbon dioxide means more plant food, and moderate warming means more rain overall. That, plus advances in gene technology and agricultural practices, have lead to record global harvests of food crops.”
That’s the trouble when you get your scientific information from the Heartland Institute’s favourite ex-TV weatherman, Andrew Watts. Deniers spend a lot of money to cherrypick data, quote it out of context, and produce misleading graphics. Whilst production might be higher in gross tonnage, he ignores demand and yield.
The IPCC report published last year said that the rate of increase in crop yields is slowing – especially in wheat – raising doubts as to whether food production will keep up with the demand of a growing population.
Wheat is the first big staple crop to be affected by climate change, because it is sensitive to heat and is grown around the world, from Pakistan to Russia to Canada. Projections suggest that wheat yields could drop 2% a decade.
The report explored a range of scenarios involving a temperature rise of two degrees or more that saw dramatic declines in production in the coming decades. Declines in crop yields will register first in drier and warmer parts of the world but as temperatures rise two, three or four degrees, they will affect everyone.
In the more extreme scenarios, heat and water stress could reduce yields by 25% between 2030 and 2049.
The report acknowledged that there were a few isolated areas where a longer growing season had been good for farming. But it played down the idea that there may be advantages to climate change as far as food production is concerned.
Overall, the report said, “Negative impacts of climate change on crop yields have been more common than positive impacts.” Scientists and campaigners pointed to the finding as a defining feature of the report.
Other food sources are also under threat. Fish catches in some areas of the tropics are projected to fall by between 40% and 60%, according to the report.
The report also connected climate change to rising food prices and political instability, for instance the riots in Asia and Africa after food price shocks in 2008.
Bolt’s articles should come with a disclaimer: “Any resemblance to responsible factual reporting is purely coincidental.”
ClimateDepot.com founder Marc Morano has been called “the Matt Drudge of climate denial,” the “king of the skeptics,” and “a central cell of the climate-denial machine,” and he revels in these descriptions. Although he has no scientific expertise, he is adamant that manmade global warming is a “con job” based on “subprime science.” Morano gained prominence working for two of the most vocal climate deniers in the U.S.: Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who notoriously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” and Rush Limbaugh, who we named Climate Change Misinformer of the Year in 2011 for his steadfast denial of climate science and wild conspiracy theories about the climate change “hoax.”
These days Morano is paid by an industry-funded group to run the climate denial website ClimateDepot.com. At Climate Depot, Morano serves as the de facto research department for the right-wing media’s attacks on climate science, and mobilizes his readers to target individual scientists and reporters for telling the public about climate change threats. The site was instrumental in manufacturing the 2009 “Climategate” controversy, which Morano incorrectly claimed exposed “deliberate manipulation of facts and data” by climate scientists. Morano is a darling of the organization most committed to climate denial, the Heartland Institute. He regularly speaks at their conferences and defended their controversial billboard comparing those who accept climate science to “murderers, tyrants, and madmen” including the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
Due to his history of smears and lies, Morano’s media influence is usually confined to Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. But in December, CNN invited him to “debate” Bill Nye on climate science, and in doing so elevated his marginal views to the mainstream press for the first time all year. For all this, Marc Morano has earned the distinction of 2012 Climate Change Misinformer of the Year.
Morano: A Professional Climate Denier
Morano Worked In Communications For Climate Deniers Rush Limbaugh And Sen. James Inhofe. Marc Morano is not a scientist and has no scientific background. Prior to starting Climate Depot, he worked as a producer for Rush Limbaugh in the 1990s where he was known as Limbaugh’s “Man in Washington.” Limbaugh continues to use Morano’s material on his radio show to misinform his millions of listeners.
[via Esquire]
Morano went on to work for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who has called climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” As Inhofe’s communication director, Morano fed misleading talking points on global warming to climate contrarians, conservative bloggers, and right-wing think tanks like the Heartland Institute. [Esquire, 3/20/10] [Climate Depot, 9/18/11] [Media Matters, 12/19/11] [Think Progress, 2/17/09]
Morano Relished When His Blog Was Called “Toxic And Divisive” By A NY Times Reporter. Morano now runs the climate denial website ClimateDepot.com, which distorts climate science and often attacks individual scientists. New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin called Morano’s blog “divisive and toxic,” to which Morano responded: “If by ‘divisive and toxic’ you mean Climate Depot is serving to derail the man-made global warming agenda and its sub-prime science and politics, I happily plead guilty!” [ClimateDepot.com, 5/8/12]
Morano Said Climate Scientists “Deserve To Be Publicly Flogged.” Morano seized on the 2009 “Climategate” controversy to call climate change a “con job” and accuse scientists of “ginning up a crisis.” He told The Daily Climate that he saw the controversy as an opportunity to sow doubt about climate science, saying: “I seriously believe we should kick them while they’re down. They deserve to be publicly flogged.” [Scientific American, 3/1/10]
Morano Defended Billboard Comparing Those Who Accept Climate Science To The Unabomber. Morano has close ties to the Heartland Institute, an industry-funded organization that hosts regular conferences and dispatches “experts” to deny that manmade global warming is a serious problem. To promote a recent conference, Heartland sponsored a billboard that associated acceptance of climate science with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. When Heartland faced backlash from corporate donors and even some of its own staff, Morano defended the billboard, calling it “edgy”:
This is so silly. Every day now, skeptics are compared to Holocaust deniers and the media yawns. But Heartland does an edgy billboard accurately reflecting the views of those featured in it and the media acts as though they are offended?
Heartland has received funding from the Charles Koch Foundation, ExxonMobil and other corporations with a financial interest in confusing the public on climate science. Morano has spoken at five Heartland Institute conferences, and is featured on Heartland’s list of global warming “experts.” He received an award from Heartland in 2011. [Media Matters, 11/28/12] [Heartland Institute, accessed 12/12/12] [Heartland Institute, 5/15/12] [Heartland Institute, 6/30/11]
Morano Gloated That More Americans Believed In Haunted Houses Than Global Warming, Saying “Science Wins.” In 2010, Morano received an award from Accuracy in Media, a group that has defended legislation in Uganda that threatened the death penalty for the “offense of homosexuality” and promoted conspiracy theories including that President Obama was not born in the U.S. In his acceptance speech, Morano touted that in “the fall of 2009, more Americans believed in haunted houses than manmade global warming, and I’m not making that up. Science wins in the end.” Morano also said that he didn’t “understand” why Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, is “taken seriously.” [YouTube video uploaded by Accuracy in Media, 2/18/10] [Media Matters, 2/7/12] [Accuracy in Media, 2/16/10]
Morano Uses Any Media Platform He Is Given To Distort Climate Science
Fox News Hosted Morano To Discuss Climate Change At Least 5 Times In 2012. A search of Nexis and Media Matters‘ internal TV archive reveals that Morano appeared on Fox News’ Your World With Neil Cavuto at least five times in 2012 to spew misinformation on climate change. Here are a few highlights:
- Climate Change Is A “Primitive Form Of Science.” In November, Morano dismissed the link between climate change and extreme weather, saying “every time there’s a bad weather event the global warming activists think we need more taxes and regulations to somehow stop bad weather. This is a primitive form of science.” He went on to compare climate models to doomsday predictions, saying: “This has now reached the level of the Mayan calendar and Nostradamus when it comes to science.” [Fox News, Your World With Neil Cavuto, 11/26/12, via Nexis]
- Global Warming Predictions Are “Akin To Medieval Witchcraft.” In August, Morano claimed climate change predictions are “failing” and compared them to “medieval witchcraft, where we used to blame witches for controlling the weather.” [Fox News, Your World With Neil Cavuto, 8/2/12, via Nexis]
- The Public Increasingly Doesn’t Believe In Climate Change “As The Science Crumbles.” In August, Morano declared that climate change has proven to be based on “subprime science,” and that the “whole movement has collapsed.” He added that “the public continues to believe less and less, as they should, as the science crumbles.” [Fox News, Your World With Neil Cavuto, 8/2/12, via Nexis]
- UN Climate Treaties Are “Very Orwellian.” Morano claimed in July that the goal of UN climate negotiations is “global governance” and wealth redistribution, adding: “It`s very Orwellian… This is stuff Orwell couldn`t conceive of, your home energy use, your travel, your train travel, airline travel all monitored by international agencies. It`s not the stuff of science fiction.” [Fox News, Your World With Neil Cavuto, 7/6/12, via Nexis]
- The “Global Warming Apocalypse… Isn’t Happening.” In April, Morano claimed that renewable energy is unnecessary because the “global warming apocalypse… isn’t happening.” He added that “even the big green gurus are reconsidering … the reason we have the wind mandates which is fear of manmade global warming.” [Fox News, Your World With Neil Cavuto, 4/30/12]
Morano Often Appears On Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones’ Show. Alex Jones is a radio host who thinks that a “New World Order” of secretive elites is trying to take over the world, impose an authoritarian government and “exterminate 80% of the world’s population.” Jones, who was one of the most prominent 9/11 truthers, has made outlandish claims, including that the government is trying to “encourage homosexuality with chemicals” in items like juiceboxes, and that Bill Gates is promoting vaccines because he is a eugenicist trying to sterilize people. Morano often appears on Jones’ show to promote conspiracy theories of his own:
- Morano Agreed Obama “Might Start A War” To Win Re-Election. After Morano predicted that Romney would win the election, Jones said that Obama might “start a war” to win re-election. Morano responded, “they could try to do that, yes, that’s always possible.” [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 9/1/12]
- Morano Fearmongered About UN Establishing A “Global EPA.” Morano claimed that the UN climate summit in Rio was pushing a “global EPA” that is “going to be able to police the world.” He added, “Think of our own EPA that speaks French. If that doesn’t send chills up your spine, I don’t know what will.” Morano’s fearmongering played into Jones’ New World Order conspiracy theory. [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 2/7/12]
- Morano Denied That July Was The Hottest Month On Record. Morano claimed scientists used “data that had been monkeyed around with” to state that July 2012 was the hottest month on record in the continental U.S. [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 9/1/12]
- Morano Accused Scientists Of “Cover[ing] Up” “Dropping” Sea Levels. Morano claimed that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a leading body of thousands of scientists assessing climate change, is a “small group of scientists” that was “blocking studies that disagreed, blocking data that disagreed, and then essentially, sometimes, generating studies that did.” He later added that scientists are trying to “cover up the fact that sea level not only isn’t accelerating, it’s dropping.” In fact, sea levels have been rising for decades and have studies indicate this rise is accelerating. [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 2/8/12] [Columbia University, accessed 12/17/12]
- Morano: UN Climate Panel Trying To “Contro[l] The World.” Morano said that those concerned about global warming are attempting to exert “a level of control that George Orwell didn’t contemplate,” adding: “He who controls carbon, and controls land use policy, and even the oceans, controls the world. And that’s what they’re going for. And this isn’t conspiracy talk, this is in their documents.” [YouTube video posted by TheAlexJonesChannel, 12/10/11]
[Media Matters, 2/25/11]
CNN Hosted Morano To “Debate” Bill Nye On Climate Science. In December CNN’s Piers Morgan hosted a “debate” on climate change between Marc Morano and Bill Nye “The Science Guy” without disclosing that Morano has no scientific background and is paid by an industry-funded organization. During the segment, Morano misleadingly claimed that “we’ve gone 16 years without global warming according to UN data,” adding:
MORANO: On my Web site there’s literally — it demolishes the idea of a hockey stick, new peer-reviewed study, so the idea that Bill Nye is just going around saying CO2 is up, therefore global warming is dangerous, we should be concerned, it’s not. It’s not dangerous.
In a blog highlighting the segment, CNN identified Morano as an “expert” on the issue and said he “presented an alternate theory regarding the impact, and concern, associated with carbon dioxide.” The blog did not clarify that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is a problem and is driven by human activity. [Media Matters, 12/5/12]
Morano Helped Enforce Climate Denial Litmus Test For 2012 Election
Morano’s Advice To GOP Candidates Who Accept Climate Science: “Keep Your Mouth Shut.” During the Republican primary season, Morano told E&E News: “You can believe in the science of global warming if you’re a GOP presidential contender if you keep your mouth shut about it and you advocate no quote-unquote solution to the problem.” [E&E News, 5/23/11]
Morano Blasted Gingrich For “Accepting The Science.” Morano has repeatedly criticized Newt Gingrich for appearing in a 2008 Alliance for Climate Protection ad with Rep. Nancy Pelosi in which he said “our country must take action to address climate change.” Morano called the ad “toxic” to Gingrich’s presidential campaign, and complained that Gingrich was “accepting the science”:
He’s acknowledging the problem. He’s accepting the science. He hasn’t backed away from endorsing Al Gore’s approach to man-made global warming. That’s why he’s going to have a problem. Newt Gingrich was not just giving aid and comfort to the opposition. He was the opposition to the global warming skeptics. [E&E News, 5/23/11]
Morano Pressured Gingrich To Cut Climate Chapter From His Book. When atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe was identified as a contributor to Newt Gingrich’s book of environmental essays, for which she was asked to write an introductory chapter on climate change, Morano went on the attack. He dismissed her work as “trash science” and encouraged readers to contact her directly by repeatedly posting her email address on his blog. Morano also blasted Gingrich as a “long-time warmist” who shows “no signs of recanting,” adding: “This is how Newt uses his intelligence?” Ranting on ClimateDepot.com, Morano wrote:
Gingrich has revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is, & always has been – -a committed believer in man-made climate fears! The fact that Hayhoe was chosen to write a chapter in his new book is all we need to know. Will Hayhoe be his potential pick for climate advisor?! Gingrich has never left Pelosi’s couch! If the GOP can only come up with Newt or Mitt — is an Obama 2nd term all that scary when it comes to climate? Just asking…
Gingrich later scrapped Hayhoe’s chapter after Rush Limbaugh — Morano’s former boss — highlighted the story on his radio show. Morano celebrated the news with the following headline:
[Media Matters, 1/4/12] [ClimateDepot.com, 12/9/11] [ClimateDepot.com, 12/30/11]
Morano Raised “Concerns” About Romney’s Stance On Climate Change. At the Heartland Institute’s 7th climate change conference, Morano raised “concerns” that some of Mitt Romney’s advisors accept the science of climate change, saying “it’s a little bit scary who he’s surrounding himself with.” He added, “It’s very frustrating for global warming skeptics when you realize who is the Republican standard bearer right now and how far we’ve come… We need a president who actually can stand up to this whole global warming brigade.” [ClimateCrocks.com, 5/30/12]
Morano Falsely Suggested That Former Romney Global Warming Advisor Favored Forced Sterilization. Last year on Alex Jones’ show, Morano expressed concern that Romney would accept manmade global warming if he were elected President, noting that he was advised by John Holdren — now President Obama’s senior science advisor — while he was governor of Massachusetts. Morano went on to suggest that Holdren supported forced sterilization, when in fact he had merely co-authored a book 32 years prior that catalogued such methods among many others but did not endorse them. From The Alex Jones Show:
MORANO: [Romney] had John Holdren as one of his advisors in Massachusetts when Romney was on his global warming kick.
[…]
AARON DYKES, ALEX JONES GUEST HOST: So just for the viewers who may not be following the name game here. You’re talking about John P. Holdren, Obama’s global warming and white house czar, who calls for a $4 billion 4 billion person genocide over overpopulation and is experimenting with this geoengineering in the atmosphere –
MORANO: Yes.
DYKES: –over global warming.
[…]
MORANO: Romney is getting a free ride in these [Republican primary] debates. John Holdren was partnered up with Paul Ehrlich. Paul Ehrlich proposed forced sterilization agents in our drinking water in the 1960’s and 70’s. [YouTube video uploaded be TheAlexJonesChannel, 10/24/11] [Media Matters, 9/17/09]
Morano Urged Romney To Pick VP Who Denied Climate Science. Responding to rumors that Mitt Romney was considering Condoleezza Rice as his running mate in 2012, Morano told Politico:
Why, oh why would Romney choose a V.P. who is smitten with the U.N. climate process[?] The stench of the carcass of the U.N. global climate treaty process is overwhelming, and despite this, Rice in 2011 regretted that Pres. Bush rejected it. Romney could do so much better than to pick Sec. Rice. [Politico, 7/13/12]
He later cheered Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan, saying, “It will be so refreshing to have a VP candidate who actually understands how warmists… have perverted science and turned it into pure politics.” [ClimateDepot.com, 8/11/12]
Morano Has A Sordid History Of Spreading Smears
At CNS News, Morano Uncritically Broke “Swift Boat” Story Smearing Sen. John Kerry. Before working for Sen. Inhofe, Morano worked as a reporter for Cybercast News Service (CNS), which is owned by the right-wing Media Research Center. In 2004, Morano broke the story about the attacks coming from the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, uncritically repeating unfounded accusations that Sen. John Kerry did not deserve the Purple Heart award he earned in Vietnam. But FactCheck.org noted that “the veterans who accuse Kerry [of lying to receive his war medals] are contradicted by Kerry’s former crewmen, and by Navy records.” Morano also repeated claims that Kerry accused soldiers of war crimes “knowing that was a lie.” But Kerry simply relayed the stories of other Vietnam veterans, and he intended them as an indictment of military leadership rather than a condemnation of soldiers. [CNSNews.com, 5/3/04, via Newsmax] [FactCheck.org, 8/6/04] [Media Matters, 8/23/04] [CNSNews.com, uploaded 7/7/08] [CNSNews.com, uploaded 7/7/08]
Morano Led “Swift Boat” Effort On Vietnam Veteran Murtha. In early 2006, Morano co-authored a story for CNS accusing Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a critic of the war in Iraq, of exaggerating injuries suffered in Vietnam and lobbying for undeserved service awards. The article was seen by many as an ad hominem political attack meant to obscure legitimate policy discussion. Morano’s story was also criticized for relying on convoluted sources, many of them potentially tinged by political bias, and recycling years-old uncorroborated charges. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), former Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, pointed out that Murtha’s service awards had actually been subject to extensive and well-documented Marine Corps approval decades earlier, and blasted “extremist Republican operatives” and others for “denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree.” [CNS News, 1/13/2006] [Washington Post, 1/17/2006, via Nexis] [Media Matters, 1/17/2006] [Huffington Post, 1/15/2006] [ConWebWatch, 1/18/2006] [New York Times, 1/18/2006] [Boston Globe, 8/5/2006]
Morano Used “Climategate” To “Swift Boat” Climate Scientists. Morano played a key role in fueling the “Climategate” controversy, seizing on hacked emails to accuse scientists of “corruption” and “fraud” and to declare that global warming is nothing more than a “con job.” Even after multiple investigations cleared scientists of these charges, Morano continues to claim that Climategate exposed “collusion” and “deliberate manipulation of facts and data” by UN scientists. Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who has been relentlessly attacked by Climate Depot, recently said that Morano is paid by “vested interests to ‘swiftboat’ climate scientists, to try to distort our work, to try to undermine the public’s credibility in the science.” [ClimateDepot.com, 11/20/09] [ClimateDepot.com, 2/17/12] [Scientific American, 3/1/10] [Conservative Roundtable, 5/7/10] [ClimateDepot.com, 11/23/11] [ClimateDepot.com, 12/3/12]
Morano Smeared Gay Attendees Of AIDS Fundraiser. In 1996, Morano attended a fundraiser for AIDS victims on behalf of the Family Research Council, an organization that has been labeled a “hate group” for its factually-challenged attacks on LGBT people. In a column for Human Events, Morano claimed that during the dance party there was “evidence of illegal drugs” because “Snorting could be heard” through the bathroom stalls. But then-Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-WI), who sponsored but did not attend the event, testified that no complaints were lodged with security. Morano also claimed to have witnessed “illegal sexual activity” in the main auditorium, which was used by conservative columnist Armstrong Williams to say that the event was an “orgy” and a “homosexual free-for-all.” But as Rep. Gunderson stated, “Absolutely no one but Mr. Morano claims to have seen this incident. But one must wonder why he did not film it. One must wonder why he did not report it to security.” Morano later claimed that he tried to capture it on camera but was unsuccessful. The Washington Times reported that “no participant contacted by The Washington Times confirmed” Morano’s claim that he “saw men engaged in sexual relations.” Morano’s column, which was identified as an example of “the journalism of bigotry and prejudice” by Rep. Gunderson, further promoted stereotypes about gay people:
The image of young active health conscious men, drinking bottled water and consuming fruit [at the fundraiser] is a study in contrast. The reckless lifestyle inherent in the gay experience results in a notably reduced life span. The life expectancy of a homosexual male is estimated to be no more than about 41 years old, regardless of AIDS. The homosexual community’s credo seems to be “Die young and leave a pretty corpse.” [Congressional Testimony, 5/14/96] [Congressional Record, 5/15/1996] [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 12/12/12] [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/2/96, via Nexis] [The Washington Times, 5/5/96, via Nexis] [The Advocate, 6/25/96]
Morano Is Paid By An Industry-Funded Advocacy Group
Morano Is Paid Over $150,000 A Year By An Oil-Funded Organization. Climate Depot is sponsored by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a conservative policy and lobbying organization that has received funding from ExxonMobil and Chevron. CFACT also received over $300,000 in 2011 from Donors Trust, an anonymously funded group that PBS called the “number one supporter of the groups” that deny climate change. CFACT’s 2011 financial disclosure form lists Morano as its highest paid employee at over $150,000 a year. [Media Matters, 11/28/12]
CFACT Claims “Global Warming Claims Are Failing.” CFACT denies that there is a scientific consensus on manmade climate change and claims that “real world evidence” shows that “global warming claims are failing.” [CFACT.org, accessed 12/11/12]
Max Greenberg contributed to this post.
- Posted in
- Climate Change, Environment & Science
- Network/Outlet
- CNN, Fox News Channel
- Person
- Marc Morano, Rush Limbaugh
- Show/Publication
- Piers Morgan Tonight
We’ve changed our commenting system to Disqus.
Instructions for signing up and claiming your comment history are located here.
Updated rules for commenting are here.
Instructions for signing up and claiming your comment history are located here.
Updated rules for commenting are here.
http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&disqus_version=63976fbc&version=e37ebbc37099b332e8deb4a594fb4233&f=mm-fa&t_i=c3%3A191878&t_u=http%3A%2F%2Fmediamatters.org%2Fresearch%2F2012%2F12%2F27%2Fclimate-change-misinformer-of-the-year-marc-mor%2F191878&t_e=Climate%20Change%20Misinformer%20Of%20The%20Year%3A%20Marc%20Morano&t_d=Climate%20Change%20Misinformer%20Of%20The%20Year%3A%20Marc%20Morano%20%7C%20Research%20%7C%20Media%20Matters%20for%20America&t_t=Climate%20Change%20Misinformer%20Of%20The%20Year%3A%20Marc%20Morano&s_o=default#2
ABOUT OUR RESEARCH
Our research section features in-depth media analysis, original reports illustrating skewed or inadequate coverage of important issues, thorough debunking of conservative falsehoods that find their way into coverage and other special projects from Media Matters’ research department.
FOLLOW US ›››
-
LATEST ››› -
Fox’s O’Reilly Excuses Ben Carson’s Comparison Of ISIS To American Patriots
Blog 25 minutes ago
-
Eric Boehlert On MSNBC’s All In: Fox’s Muslim “No-Go Zones” Myth Is “Classic Propaganda”
Video 1 hour and 33 minutes ago
-
Fox Guest: “Put Razor Wire Around” Muslim “No-Go Zones” And Catalogue Residents
Video 5 hours and 16 minutes ago
-
Fox’s Shepard Smith: The States Fighting Marriage Equality Are “The Same States That Were Fighting Integration”
Video 6 hours and 13 minutes ago
-
Wash. Post Fact-Checker Shatters Enduring Net Neutrality Myth
The Washington Post‘s Fact Checker debunked the claim that net neutrality protections could cost American consumers $15 billion in additional taxes and fees — a favorite conservative argument against net neutrality and one parroted by multiple media outlets — concluding the estimate contains “significant factual error[s] and/or obvious contradictions.”
Research 6 hours and 37 minutes ago
-
The Flawed Recidivism Statistic Fox Personalities Are Using To Criticize Release Of Guantanamo Detainees
Fox News has repeatedly pushed the debunked myth that 30 percent of released Guantanamo Bay detainees return to terror. In reality, the estimated number is around 7 percent, and has declined during Obama’s time in office.
Research 6 hours and 57 minutes ago
-
Ted Nugent To NRA News: Our Critics Are “Subhuman Mongrels”
Blog 8 hours and 8 minutes ago
-
Duke’s Call To Prayer And Fox News’ Call For Outrage
Blog 9 hours and 10 minutes ago
-
Fox Reporter To Address Gun Group That Says Violence Against The Government Is An Option
Blog 11 hours ago
-
Ingraham: GOP Needs A 2016 Nominee Willing To “Swift Boat” Hillary Clinton
Video 12 hours ago
-
Fox News Dismisses Paid Sick Leave As A “Giveaway”
Blog January 15, 2015 7:07 PM EST
-
George Will Bungles Basic Facts While Cheerleading For Keystone XL
Blog January 15, 2015 6:42 PM EST
-
The Daily Caller Relies On Holocaust Denier To Smear President Clinton
Blog January 15, 2015 5:46 PM EST
-
Despite Dropping Oil Prices, Media Are Still Dismissing Keystone XL’s Climate Impact
Many news outlets are uncritically touting the State Department’s conclusion that building the Keystone XL pipeline would not significantly worsen climate change without noting that this determination was based on an expectation of high oil prices. Some media outlets, however, have reported the significance of the recent plunge in oil prices, such as the Associated Press, which noted that “[l]ow oil prices could make the pipeline more important to the development of new oil sands projects in Canada than anticipated by the State Department … and therefore is more likely to increase emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming.”
Research January 15, 2015 5:31 PM EST
-
Fox News Sunday Invites Hate Group Leader For Debate About Same-Sex Marriage
Blog January 15, 2015 4:30 PM EST
Abbott wishes the old pope Benedict the German was still here. Latinos are far too progressive.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/31/pope_francis_calls_for_action_on
Gas rings first heat up the pot and kettle, and then the planet. Photo by Alex Proimos via Wikimedia Commons
Not Long to Wait Till Released CO2 Turns Up Temperature – Truthdig.
This morning, on the wireless, I heard the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, say the government wasn’t making cuts to the ABC.
The day before, I heard the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, say Tony Abbott hadn’t actually promised before last September’s election not to cut the budgets of the ABC and SBS. If Abbott had said something like that, then he didn’t mean it; and more likely, we’d all just misunderstood what the prime minister had said.
Also on Wednesday, I heard the prime minister tell the French president, Francois Hollande, that part of the Australian government’s policy arsenal to combat the risks associated with climate change involved funding an agency called the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
What he didn’t tell the French president was the government intends to abolish the CEFC.
In politics at the present time, we are drowning in nonsense. The nonsense waves are not only lapping, elegantly, at our ankles, they are picking us all up and dumping us head first into the sand.
The Abbott government is performing so many contortions, and running so rhetorically ragged, it’s hard to see if anything coherent is actually going on.
The maximum self-harm you can inflict on yourself in politics is to obscure your substance with abject nonsense, and yet federal politics has been seemingly locked in this cycle for the past couple of terms. Labor deadweighted itself with kindergarten intrigues and dysfunctional personality conflicts.
This government is seemingly intent on deadweighting itself with evasions and too-clever-by-half constructions that can be ripped apart comprehensively in about a minute-and-a-half.
You cannot, as Tony Abbott did in opposition, make a virtue of authenticity and truth-telling in politics then break promises and spout nonsense from the moment you take the prime ministership. By Abbott’s own measure, this behaviour is immoral; and if politics is too flawed a business to apply morality, then from a self-interest perspective, it’s a recipe for self-destruction.
It is death by a thousand cuts.
Let’s be clear on the examples flagged at the start of this dispatch. The government is cutting the budgets of the ABC and SBS. It doesn’t matter whether you call the cut an efficiency dividend because it sounds kinder, or if you call it an interpretative dance – it’s a cut.
Abbott made an unequivocal promise before the last election not to cut the budgets of the public broadcasters. There were no underpants on what he said – it was black and white. So no, Malcolm, we did not misunderstand what the prime minister said, and you really insult our collective intelligence (and your own) by suggesting otherwise.
As for the CEFC construction – well, that kind of takes the cake. Abbott is sounding increasingly defensive and sensitive on climate change, which he should.
The government has taken a carbon pricing scheme that was rational and functional and replaced it with a scheme that most sensible analysts think is an absolute dog. To dress up clear policy regression as action is an absurdity – absurd enough to be seen for what it is in far away capitals of the world.
On Wednesday in the Senate, two newcomers to Australian politics did a very simple thing. Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir got to their feet and said, effectively: we screwed up, we are sorry. We made the compromises and engaged in the sheep-like behaviour that institutional politics seems to demand. It delivered a poor result, and we are going to try very hard not to do that again.
Rather than sneering at the newbies, some of the old timers in Parliament House could stop for a minute and have a good, hard think about that gesture of atonement.
Truth-telling and humility are powerful things.
And as bankrupt as things currently are in Canberra, it is not too late for politics to learn that basic lesson.
Recent developments on the climate change front (both from scientists and politicians) prove the issue is still vexed, but there are signs voters are warming to the scientific view, write Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods.
If there’s one thing settled on climate change, it is that the debate inevitably leads to extreme emotions, opinions and warnings of doom, be it the national economy or the global ecosystem.
Years of divisive politicking around the issue has culminated in a policy with little public support and an electorate split over an issue that scientists warn us we need to confront in the here and now.
The extremes have been on display this week, with a new report from the IPCC warning the window to act is closing, while the Abbott Government managed to finally shut the gate on a deal to enact its policy of “Direct Action” with the support of mining magnate and sometimes environmental activist Clive Palmer.
This week’s twin developments neatly sum up the debate in Australia – a scientific community calling for urgent action for the future and a political response focused on minimising impact on the here and now.
Our Essential Report shows that voters aren’t overly surprised by scientific predictions of more frequent extreme weather events.
Of those who think extreme weather events will increase, three quarters believe the increase is likely linked to climate change.
But a significant proportion, 16 per cent, still believe a link between extreme weather and climate change is unlikely.
This finding reflects a continuing divide in the community about the science of climate change. Our polling has shown a fairly consistent pattern over the last few years of about half believing climate change is real and human induced and a third believing any unusual climate antics are a normal fluctuation.
Most recently we’ve seen a decline in the “normal fluctuation” camp – down nearly 10 points since the start of the year, suggesting a swing could be on to greater acceptance of the scientific view put so forcefully by the IPCC.
The Coalition was highly effective in exploiting divisions about climate science and policy and tearing down Labor’s climate scheme, but it now faces the challenge of putting up its own credible alternative.
Direct Action has never appealed much to voters and has been consistently less popular than various options involving pricing carbon.
Support for Direct Action as the best means of tackling climate change has bounced around between 5 and 15 per cent over the past year, coming in at 10 per cent when we most recently asked at the end of September.
Adding to the complexity – as we’ve found before Direct Action gets the limited support it does from people who are less likely to believe that climate change is real and caused by human activity. In other words, Direct Action is the policy of choice for climate change deniers.
This picture suggests the Abbott Government is set to get tangled up in a political mess on climate policy in the same way Labor did – in large part because of its own determination to exploit the issue for political gain rather than work co-operatively towards a policy solution that could gain broad support.
But while Abbott has played hard on climate politics, he’s hardly the first.
The Greens have been roundly criticised for failing to make the compromises necessary to close the deal with Labor to secure the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme mark 1; while Labor wouldn’t have had to negotiate with the Greens if Kevin Rudd had prioritised getting a deal with Malcolm Turnbull over exploiting the political divisions on climate within the Coalition.
As it stands, Australians see a future of more frequent and extreme weather events caused by climate change, with a climate policy they’re not convinced by.
And if the expected long, hot summer eventuates, the only thing for certain is the loud voices on both sides of the debate will lock in behind their preconceptions.
Where is Team Australia when you really need it?
Samantha Power begins tour of worst-affected countries with criticism of international efforts
Ebola: US ambassador hits out at countries failing to help west Africa
The US ambassador to the United Nations has criticised the level of international support for nations hit by Ebola as she begins a tour of west African nations at the epicentre of the deadly outbreak.
Samantha Power said before arriving in Guinea on Sunday that too many leaders were praising the efforts of countries like the US and Britain to accelerate aid to the worst-affected nations, while doing little themselves.
“The international response to Ebola needs to be taken to a wholly different scale than it is right now,” Power told NBC News.
She said many countries were “signing on to resolutions and praising the good work that the United States and the United Kingdom and others are doing, but they themselves haven’t taken the responsibility yet to send docs, to send beds, to send the reasonable amount of money”.
Besides Guinea, Power will travel to Sierra Leone and Liberia – the three nations that account for the vast majority of the 4,922 deaths from the Ebola epidemic.
More than 10,000 people have contracted the virus in west Africa, according to the latest World Health Organisation figures.
Another country in the region, Mali, is scrambling to prevent a wider outbreak after a two-year-old girl died from her Ebola infection following a 600-mile bus ride from Guinea. She was Mali’s first recorded case of the disease.
An adviser to the Malian health ministry said the 43 people placed under medical observation in Kayes in western Mali – where the girl died on Friday – showed no signs of the illness.
About a dozen other people were also being observed in the capital, Bamako, where the girl had spent about three hours visiting relatives on the way to Kayes.
Mauritania meanwhile reinforced controls on its border with Mali, which effectively closed the frontier, according to local sources.
Abbott could spend $2bill less to achieve the emissions reduction target of 19% set for 2020. It would boost our chances of achieving the 5% cut in emissions on the levels of 2000. We could buy International credits for 20% of the $2.5bill allocated to Direct Action. The Business Council of Australia & The Australian Industry Group support it. However our Rhodes Scholar PM back in 2011 was known to have said ” money shouldn’t be going off shore into dodgy carbon farms”.
The Climate Change Authority ,which Abbott wants to axe, says meeting the targets with only domestic action is too expensive when there is a flood cheap international permits about. After all “Australia is open for business” and business is a two way street. Why not trade.
Is he really going to override the UN & cut down 74,000 hectares of trees in Tasmania and then replace them and call the result Direct Action ? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them all alone after all he didn’t support the car industry.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.