Miss a Little, Miss a Lot...of Misinformation

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you" - Friedrich Nietzcshe

There are so few certainties in life: death, taxes, and of course, Fox News propagandist Robert Rees spreading misinformation about global warming. Death and taxes are both covered extensively elsewhere, so I'll write about how a transplant from Texas spreads misinformation locally in central Illinois.

On June 13th, I was making my usual trek to work, and like most days, my radio was tuned to the news and misinformation of Bloomington-Normal, a.k.a the Morning Rush with Robert Rees on Cities 92.9.

Robert Rees

The reason I tune into Cities 92.9 is because of the amusement I experience when I hear the unbelievably inane comments made by Robert and some of his regular callers (I'm looking at you Ed!). A common slogan used by the station is "miss a little, miss a lot" as though missing what Robert talks about may actually mean you missed something important, or perhaps even insightful. The problem there is that while Robert has opinions, they aren't very well researched opinions. He simply regurgitates a heaping helping of Fox News propaganda, without much thought into whether or not those positions have any basis in reality. On this particular day, Robert breached a topic I'm well versed in, and take very seriously; global warming.

ROBERT REES: There's some report coming from, I don't know, some place, that's basically saying that the Earth is heating up faster than previously believed, and I'm like, really? Because pretty much everything else I've seen coming out in the past couple months has been showing how we have not been having uh, things warm up faster, in fact, its been cooling.

Naturally, I was curious to hear where Robert was going to take this line of inquiry, since a recently published study in the science journal Geophysical Research Letters demonstrates that global warming as a whole is accelerating, despite a slowdown in atmospheric warming.

Accelerated global warming at a time when atmospheric warming is slowing down may sound counter-intuitive, but only for those who think that atmospheric temperature trends are representative of global warming as a whole. In reality, the lion's share - upwards of 90% - of global warming takes place in the earth's oceans.  The warming of the atmosphere - which science deniers focus all of their attention on as it fluctuates up and down, yet trends upward - only represents around 2% of the total increase in global warming.

Here's a graphical representation of the heat distribution associated with global warming:

As you can see, atmospheric warming represents a percentage of the area represented by the color red, which is itself only a small portion of the bigger picture.

In the study, titled "Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content" the authors point out that the deep ocean is accumulating significant heat. Prior studies had focused on ocean heat accumulation to depths of 700 m, but with this new research, scientists realized that a significant amount of heat is accumulating in waters that go much deeper.

From the abstract:

"In the last decade, about 30% of the [ocean] warming has occurred below 700 m, contributing significantly to an acceleration of the warming trend"

I'm not at all surprised that Robert didn't mention the source for the claim that global warming is accelerating. That claim comes from a paper published in an actual peer reviewed scientific journal, and as you'll soon see, Robert only mentions papers published in science journals when he thinks, or wants his audience to think, that they mirror his own anti-scientific views on global warming.

Robert continues:

ROBERT REES: In fact, there's an article from the BBC, here's the title; Climate Slowdown Means Extreme Rates of Warming Not as Likely. And it's a, writing in Nature Geoscience, the researchers say that there has been a stand still in the heating of the earth's atmosphere, and this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades. The slowdown in the expected rate of global warming has been studied for several years now, and earlier this year the UK Met office lowered their five year temperature forecast. It says this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures.

How odd. Not a single reference to cooling appears in Robert's description of the article. In fact, it doesn't appear to be an article about cooling at all, it sounds more like an article about a slowdown in the rate of atmospheric warming, which as I've already pointed out from the study referenced above, doesn't mean that global warming as a whole is slowing down, and it certainly doesn't mean cooling, except I suppose for residents of Planet Robert.

Robert continues:

ROBERT REES: Uh, long story short, the scientists, even the global warming scientists, the big uh, the sky is falling individuals, they're going uh, you know what, we're kind of at a stand still on temperatures, they really haven't changed that much.

Long story short, is that Robert's summary bears little resemblance to his description of the article. According to his own words, the article doesn't say anything about how much temperatures have changed, only that the change in atmospheric temperatures is not happening as rapidly as previously predicted.

Just for fun, I pulled up the article myself using a google search, and immediately recognized that by leaving out key statements, Robert had intentionally misrepresented the article. The reason he did this is obvious; many of those statements undermine the point Robert was trying to make.

For example, Robert read this line from the article:

"The researchers say this will reduce predicted warming in the coming decades."

But skipped over the very next line which says:

"But long-term, the expected temperature rises will not alter significantly."

He also read this line from the article:

"But this new paper gives the clearest picture yet of how any slowdown is likely to affect temperatures"

But did not read the rest of the sentence, which says:

"in both the short-term and long-term."

Clearly, this is not an article that supports global warming denial. It's main message is that in the short-term, atmospheric warming is still occurring, but at a rate that is slower than previously predicted. But in the long-term, the expected warming will be essentially what has been predicted all along. Robert tried to pass off this article as being about how warming isn't occurring at all, but obviously, that isn't true.

There are some other interesting tidbits in the BBC article that Robert would never mention on his show. One of those is the statement that these results are consistent with IPCC predictions that were made back in 2007.

And finally, there's this little tidbit at the end of the article:

"We would expect a single decade to jump around a bit but the overall trend is independent of it, and people should be exactly as concerned as before about what climate change is doing," said Dr Otto.

Is there any succor in these findings for climate sceptics who say the slowdown over the past 14 years means global warming is not real?

"None. No comfort whatsoever," he said.

And if Robert's description of the article wasn't misleading enough, take a look at the description Cities 92.9 used to describe the podcast of this discussion:

"Some changing opinions on climate change from climate scientists"

Lyndon B. Johnson

It is true that opinions are changing among climate scientists regarding climate change, just not in the direction that Cities 92.9 would mislead their audience into believing. We've come a long way since Lyndon Johnson made this statement in an address to the Congress in 1965:

LYNDON JOHNSON: Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

Today, upwards of 97% of the world's climate experts agree that human activities are to blame for global warming.

I've demonstrated previously that Cities 92.9 generally, and Robert Rees in particular, are not reliable sources on the subject of global warming. But in those previous instances, I attributed this incompetence to gross ignorance. No more. I now believe that Robert and Cities 92.9 are actively trying to mislead the public. So much for Robert's claimed advocacy for "the good morals and values that established this country."