I CAN'T HEAR YOU: Climate skeptics find their own scientist too inconvenient to acknowledge

-->

Conservative columnist George Will and a horde of climate change skeptics in the blogosphere have weighed in gleefully in recent days regarding climate scientist Phil Jones’ “admission” that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995. The argument popped up last week on the RightMichigan blog. It’s a variation on a common argument that typically uses 1998 as the year that global temperatures supposedly stopped going up.

So I did something a little outrageous, and actually read the interview where Jones made the statement.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm

There, we learn that “statistically significant” for scientists means at a “95 percent confidence level.” We also learn that the global temperature rise during the period in question was very close to that 95 percent confidence level, with a trend of 0.12C temperature rise per decade. That’s LOT different from saying there was no temperature rise.

But wait, there’s more!

Dr. Patrick Michaels is a climatologist in the employ of the free-market-is-the-answer-to-everything Cato Institute. He is one of the climate skeptics’ poster boys. A credentialed climatologist who is regularly trotted out to defend the status quo.

I talked with Dr. Michaels in January at a Detroit News-sponsored climate debate during the Auto Show in Detroit. He wore lime green tennis shoes with his coat and tie. But I digress.

At the Detroit debate, Dr. Michaels agreed that the planet is warming, and that manmade emissions have something to do with it. He also said the old argument that global warming stopped in 1998 is scientifically invalid and should be tossed on the scrap heap of discredited arguments. 

It was a fascinating statement that, not surprisingly, the Detroit News did not see fit to include in the edited video clips of the debate they posted online.

But it turns out that Michaels said essentially the same thing to a gathering of right-wing Heritage Foundation folks in 2008. He said the data do not back up the “no warming since 1998” contention, and warned the audience that using the argument erodes their credibility. “Make an argument that you can get killed on, and you can kill us all,” he lectured them. 

You can listen to his explanation and admonishment here, starting at about the 1:20 mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwnrpwctIh4

It is a bizarre and pathetic commentary when climate skeptics begin finding that even the truths of their own heroes are too inconvenient to acknowledge.

###

A letter to WDIV Channel 4 Meteorologist Chuck Gadica

Chuck Gadica

Hello Chuck (Gadica)

Thank you very much for the piece you did tonight (Thursday, Feb. 24 on the 11 o’clock) about why a warming planet may result in more precipitation. Using the sponges with the demonstration made it easily understandable for a lay audience (I might steal the idea myself!)

It surely helped inform the shrill dialogue over whether more snowstorms and rainfall amounts disprove climate change theory. They don’t.

I was stunned, however that you referred to rising global temperatures twice as an uncertain proposition. (“…if we are warming…”) Even the most skeptical scientists now acknowledge that the climate has been warming for some time. Dr. Patrick Michaels – a leading skeptic and one of few climatologists who openly challenges the IPCC report  – told a panel discussion audience in Detroit two years ago that the planet was most assuredly warming, (although he believes mankind may not be a significant driver in that trend). He told the audience that making the argument that ‘the planet is not warming’ is a discredit to the skeptics’ cause because it is so easily and thoroughly disproved.

The data is unambiguous. NOAA reports that 2010 tied for the warmest year on global record, and that it was the 34^th consecutive year that global temperatures exceeded the 20^th Century average. (emphasis mine). 

The question of how significant a contribution mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions make to this warming climate; and the ranges of temperatures and changes we might see in the future are addressed most rigorously in the IPCC report, which concludes both the contribution and effects are/will be significant. Of course, there are no precise answers to these important questions.  

However, the simpler question of whether the planet is warming -- or not -- is abundantly clear through NOAA’s recorded data and that of other agencies throughout the world.

Your help in explaining science to your viewers is invaluable, and you do it very well….but I hope in the future you will make it clear to viewers that the data show unambiguously that the earth is getting warmer, and has been for many decades.

 Thank you very much for your time,

Hugh McDiarmid Jr.

Farmington Resident\15 year WDIV viewer

(Phone number)