Tea Party Wisdom with Rand Paul

On this historic day in which the Supreme Court affirmed that Obamacare is in fact constitutional, we get this gem from the Department of the Dumbest Politicians Ever to be Elected to Public Office:

"Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'Constitutional' does not make it so" -Rand Paul

Local Conservative Voice, Questionable Conservative Resources

"I disagree with these experts, somebody has got to stand up to experts"
- Don Mcleroy, Republican Chair of the Texas State Board of Education

Robert Rees

In my last post, I was critical of Cities 92.9 Morning Rush host Robert Rees, for making some pretty silly claims about global warming, and for passing off as fact a Daily Mail headline which was intentionally written to misinform people about climate science. That tabloid article, which used to be located at this link, has since been deleted from the Daily Mail's website, which belies Robert's claim that it would be liberals who would be guilty of covering that story up.

The good news regarding this bit of dishonesty - by a conservative resource no less - is that it provides Robert with an opportunity to prove he was being sincere when he voiced concern over the handling of that story. The story was clearly handled dishonestly, albeit not from the people Robert preemptively accused, and if the presumption of dishonesty warranted mentioning on his show, then I would think that actual dishonesty would warrant a mention. I haven't heard Robert issue a correction to this story yet, but I'm holding out hope that Robert believes in correcting misinformation that he's been duped into passing along to the general public, even if it comes from a conservative resource.

To Robert's credit, he has responded to my criticism. In his response, Robert insisted that he never tries to deceive anyone, and honestly, I believe him. However, his audience has been deceived, and Robert played a role in that deception. This could very easily have been avoided had Robert been more discerning with his choice of resources, after all, evidence of dishonesty was right there in the article, and this wouldn't be the first time the Daily Mail was involved in deception over global warming.

And speaking of deceptive resources, I've reviewed the web sites that Robert provided in his response to me; web sites that Robert claims support some of his commentary. And after reviewing them, I've come to the conclusion that the term support takes on a completely different meaning to Robert than it does to me. When I claim that my arguments are supported, I generally mean that they are supported by primary sources. By primary sources, I mean that if I talk about NASA data, or NASA studies, I ought to be able to refer someone directly to information provided by NASA, such as on NASA's website. I certainly wouldn't dream of referring anyone to a website called globalwarminglies, and then think that I've provided an unbiased, reliable resource for anything. But that's exactly what Robert did, and I'm not kidding, one of the web sites he referred me to is actually called globalwarminglies. I didn't know I could type while facepalming (TWF), but this paragraph is proof that I can.

What follows is a critique of each of the sources provided by Robert:

The first of Robert's links I looked at is to a site called C3 Headlines. The linked page contains the following heading and sub heading:

Greenhouse Gas Facts: Official NASA Temp Data Indicates Less Than A 1 Degree Increase By End of Century

The actual greenhouse gas facts are considered to be weak evidence of catastrophic global warming hypothesis by the vast majority of scientists - latest NASA-GISS empirical information confirms why

And it includes the following graph:

The graph combines both temperature and CO2 levels over a 15 year period starting in April, 1997, through March, 2012, using data from NASA GISS and NOAA. In the yellow box at the base of the graph is the following claim:

"Over the last 15 years, the facts indicate CO2 has little impact on global temperatures."

So the basic argument here, is that since CO2 trends upward over the 15 years, but temperatures seem to be leveling off, and possibly decreasing somewhat in the same period, then we can conclude that the two are not trending together, and therefore CO2 has nothing to do with atmospheric temperature. Seems somewhat convincing at first glance, but then, not so much after looking at the bigger picture.

If you look at the raw data, which I linked to above, you'll notice that the temperature data goes back to 1880, which begs the question; why did the authors of C3 Headlines only graph and display the last 15 years? And the answer to that is simple; graphing the temperature all the way back to 1880 paints a completely different picture than the one being presented here. Take a look and see for yourself, that same temperature data graphed back to 1880 looks like this:

This graph is presented courtesy of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is one of the primary sources for the data used by C3 Headlines to make their graph. What this graph shows is the global mean temperature for the period 1880, through 2011. Keep in mind that the C3 Headlines graph only covers the very rightmost portion of this graph, which shows that temperatures have been on the increase since 1880. Yes there are short term fluctuations that trend toward cooling, but the overall trend is one of temperatures increasing, just as the volume of atmospheric CO2 has increased over that same time period. What C3 Headlines did was select only that data from the sample that makes it look like CO2 and temperature are not trending together, when a complete graphing of the data would have shown that they do. This tactic is called cherry picking, which is the act of selectively using data to misrepresent what the data really says. It's a dishonest tactic, and it's sole purpose is to mislead.

There's another section on the C3 Headlines page that deserves attention, and a facepalm. At the bottom of the page is what appears to be two predictions based on the 15 year graph:

Conclusion: Greenhouse gas facts continue to be very weak empirical evidence of catastrophic CO2-induced global warming as hypothesized by the UN's IPCC and its assocated "scientists."

- Last 15 years (thru March) global temperature trend: +0.77 degree increase by 2100

- Last 10 years (thru March) global temperature trend: +0.07 degree increase by 2100

 Yes, you read that correctly. C3 Headlines found their 15 years of cherry picked data compelling enough to use it as the sole predictor for global temperatures some 88 years into the future. And this is a site the Local Conservative voice recommends for information regarding climate science? Ouch.

The second of Robert's links was to a site called Personal Liberty Digest. The linked page contains the following headline:

NASA data proves global warming computer models wrong

The article references a science paper called "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance" that was published in July of 2011, by science journal, Remote Sensing.

So what was the gist of this paper? Well, it brought into question the accuracy of climate modeling, by claiming the models get the energy balance wrong, and make predictions that lean too warm. What you don't get from reading the article that Robert linked to though, is what the late great Paul Harvey used to refer to as "the rest of the story".

You see, it turns out that about 2 months after that paper was published, another paper appeared in the very same journal with the following title "Taking Responsibility on Publishing the Controversial Paper - On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth's Radiant Energy Balance." This paper was published by the journal's editor, Wolfgang Wagner, who acknowledged that the climate paper had not been properly peer reviewed, and that it should not have been published in the first place. He then resigned his position.

Here are some key quotes that come from his editorial.

About exaggerations made in the media:

With this step, I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper's conclusions in public statements, e.g., in a press release of the University of Alabama in Huntsville from 27 July 2011, the main author's personal homepage, the story "New NASA data blow gaping hole in global warming alarmism" published by Forbes, and the story "Does NASA data show global warming lost in space?" published by Fox News, to name just a few.

Why the paper was flawed:

So Why, after a more careful study of the pro and contra arguments, have I changed my initial view? The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.

So while Robert likes to refer to this particular resource to claim that climate models are wrong, it's very clear that the resource doesn't have any substance behind it.

The next link I looked at was to a site I referenced previously called Global Warming Lies. The linked page contains the following statement across the top:

"There is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere or disruption of the Earth's climate"

Which is followed by a reference to the Oregon Petition Project, which is a document that boasts signatures from over 32,000 scientists who agree with a statement similar to the one on the top of the web site.

I wasn't at all surprised to see a reference to the Oregon Petition on one of Robert's resource pages. I'm familiar with it, as I've looked into it before. It's basically a petition that climate skeptics can put there name on if they agree with the statement, and if they qualify as a scientist. And with 32,000 signatures, it does seem very impressive, that is, until you look at the big picture. It turns out that there are around  13 million people who fit the qualification, so in that context, 32,000 is a very small number. Scientific American wrote about the petition back in 2006. Here's a small taste:

Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold Ph.D. in a climate - related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition - one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers - a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.

And here's a terrific video about the petition:

So, I've barely looked at this resource and already I'm unimpressed.

The rest of the page doesn't get much better, as it's dedicated almost entirely to the idea that CO2 is good, no matter the concentration. In fact, Robert makes that argument on his show all the time, claiming that CO2 isn't harmful because it's good for plants. Nobody denies this, so that particular argument is a complete waste of energy. The issue is how concentrations of CO2 effect temperature, and that link is well established in the scientific literature.

The last of Robert's links is to a web site that promotes a book called Climatism. The term is defined on the web site as "the belief that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are destroying Earth's climate".

I spend a lot of time reading about various scientific topics, including climate change, and I've never heard or read of a climate change believer who thinks that man-made greenhouse gas emissions would or could destroy Earth's climate. If that's the starting point of this book, then it appears to be one giant strawman argument. There are plenty of those on the internet, I wouldn't dream of wasting my time with one in book form.

That's all the time I'm going to spend on these sources. Support for Robert's rant was nowhere to be found, but then, that's what I expected.