Local Conservative Voice vs National Unemployment Statistics

There are two ways of lying. One, not telling the truth and the other, making up statistics - Josephina Vazquez Mota

Author's Note: This is a post I was working on in April of 2013 when Robert Rees was still at the helm of Cities 92.9. For reasons that escape me right now, this post didn't make it onto the pages of facepalming. A lot has changed at Cities since that time, except of course for the bucket loads of stupidity that stream from their call letters on a daily basis. So sit back, and enjoy this look back at an earlier Cities 92.9 master of stupidity:

Robert Rees has a problem with facts and data.

Robert Rees

During Thursday's segment of The Morning Rush with Robert Rees on Cities 92.9, Robert expressed shock and dismay that anyone would point a finger of blame at anyone but Barack Obama for the unemployment numbers of the last 4 years. He claimed he had spoken with people during the 2012 presidential campaign who blamed George Bush for those numbers, and he just couldn't understand how anyone could reach that conclusion. Lucky for Robert, I happen to know why some people have reached that conclusion, and I'm happy to share that bit of information with him. But, before doing that, I need to address a comment that Robert made during the segment:

ROBERT REES: George Bush averaged 4.5% unemployment during his term.

Uh, wrong.

The average unemployment rate was higher than 4.5% in all eight years of George W Bush's presidency. Anybody that understands averages - which usually means fourth graders on up - will tell you that the average of a set of numbers will never be lower than the smallest number used to calculate that average.

Of course, accurate information begins with accurate resources, and since Robert has a pretty shaky track record in that department, it shouldn't surprise anyone when his numbers clash with reality. For those of us who live in the reality based community, there are reliable resources available for just about anything, and for labor statistics, oddly enough, we turn to places like the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What follows is a chart showing the average unemployment rate for every month of the Bush presidency, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The graph doesn't show yearly averages, or a cumulative average for the entire eight years, but those aren't hard to figure out, hell, any fourth grader could do it. I went ahead and calculated those averages myself, and assuming I can calculate averages as well as a fourth grader, I came up with the following yearly averages, and yes, I rounded up and down where appropriate:

2001 - 4.7%
2002 - 5.8%
2003 - 6.0%
2004 - 5.5%
2005 - 5.1%
2006 - 4.6%
2007 - 4.6%
2008 - 6.3%

Since the range consists of 4.6% on the low end, and 6.3% on the high end, the average must fall somewhere in between, which rules out Robert's 4.5%. To check my accuracy, you can calculate the overall average yourself. I concluded that the overall unemployment average for the Bush presidency comes out to be approximately 5.3%, which is almost a full percentage point above the 4.5% number that Robert pulled from his nether regions.

Robert then asked the following question:

ROBERT REES: How can they blame Bush for 8 + percentage of unemployment during Obama's four years? 

How can they indeed.

Well, let's take a closer look at the numbers. Prior to 2008, the highest monthly unemployment average during the Bush years occurred in June of 2003. During that month, unemployment averaged 6.3%, which, along with a few other months that year with numbers hovering around 6%, contributed to making 2003 the second worst year for Bush in terms of unemployment numbers. But again, that was prior to 2008. Answering Robert's question requires looking at the worst year for unemployment numbers during the Bush years. The worst year for Bush in terms of unemployment numbers was 2008, which not only served as the last year of Bush's presidency, but set the bar for the beginning of the Obama presidency.

Let's look again at the Bush unemployment numbers, but this time using a graph courtesy of the Bureau of Labor  Statistics:

If you look at the right side of the graph, you'll see that unemployment began to rise in early 2007, and continued unabated throughout the entire year of 2008. By December of 2008 - a month prior to Obama being sworn in as the next president - unemployment exceeded 7%, and was still rising. In fact, it was in December of 2008 that the Bush administration acknowledged for the first time that we were in a recession, but this concession only came after months of denial, and after the release of a government report that December showing the biggest month of job losses in 34 years.

Let's now take a look at the unemployment numbers for the Obama presidency, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Notice that at the very moment that Barack Obama was being sworn in for his first term, which occurred on January 20th of 2009, the unemployment rate had already breached 8%, and was still climbing. A huge contrast to the stable economy, and the 4.2% unemployment that ushered in the beginning of the Bush years.

Now look again - courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics - at a graphical representation of the Obama unemployment numbers:

Notice the sharp increase in unemployment numbers at the very beginning of the Obama presidency - a continuation of the increase from the Bush years - that peaks in October of 2009 at 10%, and has declined ever since. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the Obama presidency registers a larger unemployment average than the Bush years. But is it fair to compare the average unemployment under Bush - who was handed a stable economy at 4.2% unemployment - with the average unemployment under Obama - who was handed an economy in free fall at over 8% unemployment?

Conservative commentators - like Robert Rees - would have us believe that Obama is to blame for the high unemployment numbers that have plagued his presidency, but to do that, Rober has to rely on his audience being completely ignorant of the fact that the Obama presidency inherited an economy in sharp decline.

ROBERT REES: Where do they get their information from?

That's easy Robert, they get their information from reality, which is not where you get your information from, obviously.

Local Conservative Voice and Misinformation about the Global Warming Consensus

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former" - Albert Einstein

If Cities 92.9 practiced truth in advertising, their promos for The Morning Rush with Robert Rees would have to include stupidity and misinformation as two of their primary features, rather than just "news and talk".

Case in point is the consensus view among climate scientists regarding climate change.

Based on extensive reading, I take the position that among climate scientists who are actively engaged in studying the climate and publishing their results in peer reviewed scientific journals, the consensus viewpoint is near unanimous that the earth is warming, and that warming is mostly due to human activities. So about a month ago, I was a bit surprised to hear Robert Rees make the following claim on his morning show:

ROBERT REES: "The left calls Republicans, or basically anybody who believes that global warming - if it exists - is not man-made, then they call them a science denier, even though the science is pretty much split on that issue, and more and more people are coming on the side of, yeah, ok, maybe man isn't creating global warming. Even though more scientists are going that way more and more, and the science is split on it, you're a science denier."

After hearing this comment, I immediately sent the following text message to the show:

The science isn't split. Among published climate scientists, 97% agree that global warming is mostly due to human activities which include the burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes. 97% isn't a split, it's a landslide.

I regularly send text messages to the show, and Robert always reads and responds to them immediately, except in this instance. For this text, the response came about 30 or so minutes later, which was after I had left for work and was no longer listening. I finally caught the response later in the week from the podcast for that particular day:

ROBERT REES: "And you my dear sir are reading very old outdated data. That study came out a long time ago and has been more than once debunked. That study that you're referring to is a study from a University of Illinois professor where he says uh, 97% of climate scientists say that global warming is man-made."

The reason Robert didn't respond immediately was now obvious, he wanted to first look into the matter before responding, which is fine, but his response raises two questions:

1. Does the 97% claim come from a single study, as claimed by Robert?

2. Has this study been thoroughly debunked, as claimed by Robert?

The short answer to both questions is no.

It turns out that Robert is the one using bad data, and as you'll see later in this essay, the bad information appears to be coming from a well known misinformation outlet known as the Heartland Institute.

To address the first claim - that the 97% number comes from a single study - let's take a look at some of the history of scientific attempts to quantify the scientific consensus on climate change:

Oreskes, 2004

In 2004, Naomi Oreskes published a paper in the peer reviewed science journal Science which was titled The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change. In the paper, Oreskes explains that a search of the  ISI database for scientific papers published between 1993 and 2003 using the keywords "global climate change" returned 928 scientific papers. The paper itself lists only climate and change as the search keywords, but this was an error at the time the paper went to print and has been corrected after the fact. From the paper:

"The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."

So, in 2004, the Oreskes study looked back over a decade of climate science, and did not find any significant disagreement with the consensus view point that humans are significantly affecting climate change.

Doran et al., 2009

In 2009, Peter T. Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman of the University of Illinois at Chicago published a paper called Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change which describes the results of a survey sent to 10,257 earth scientists asking the following two questions;

1. When compare with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?

2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?

This is the study that Robert Rees referred to while responding to my text message, and now speaks of regularly on his show. First I'll let the authors describe their study, then I'll present the explanation the Heartland Institute supplied to Robert.

First, regarding the number of responses.

"With 3,146 individuals completing the survey, the participant response rate for the survey was 30.7%. This is a typical response rate for web-based surveys [Cook et al., 2000; Kaplowitz et al., 2004]."

Next, regarding how the respondents were categorized based on areas of research.

"With survey participants asked to select a single category, the most common area of expertise reported were geochemistry (15.5%), geophysics (12%), and oceanography (10.5%). General geology , hydrology/hydrogeology, and paleontology each accounted for 5-7% of the respondents. Approximately 5% of the respondents were climate scientists, and 8.5% of the respondents  indicated that more than 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the last 5 years have been on the subject of climate change. While respondents names are kept private, the authors noted that the survey included participants with well-documented dissenting opinions on global warming theory."

And finally, the study's conclusions.

"Results show that overall 90% of participants answered "risen" to question 1 and 82% answered yes to question 2. In general, as the level of active research and specialization in climate science increases, so does agreement with the two primary questions (figure 1). In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered "risen" to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2."

And now, behold the description of the study that Robert Rees read to his listening audience. This is exactly the type of description one would expect from the weapons grade misinformers at the Heartland Institute. I'll address the spin and the falsehoods as they present themselves.

ROBERT REES: "Here's the thing, and this comes from the Heartland Institute, he says a graduate student asked the following questions to 10,000 earth scientists working for universities and government research agencies. So, ten plus thousand earth scientists were asked these questions: 1) When compared with pre-1800 levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant? Question 2) Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures? They only received responses from 3,000 individuals which is only 5% of self identified climate scientists. So they sent out the question to 10,000. Only got responses from 3,000."

Notice the attempt at downplaying the number of respondents, even though according to the study, it falls within the range of what is expected for these types of surveys.  

ROBERT REES: "But, to get to the magic 97% in the affirmation of both questions, you know, saying yes to both questions, the study's authors had to whittle down the survey to 79 climate scientists. Those are individuals who published more than 50% of their recent peer reviewed papers on the subject of climate change. So, [laughing] they took out of 10,000 earth scientists who worked for universities and government research agencies, they whittled down their questionnaire down to 79 individuals. That's how you get 97%."

The survey wasn't whittled down to just 79 scientists, as anyone can plainly see by following the link I provided to the actual paper. All respondents are accounted for in the results, but are categorized by level of climate science expertise. The 79 individuals that reflect the 97% number are those who were categorized as both climatologists, and active publishers of climate science. In other words, those with the highest level of expertise. It wouldn't make sense to include earth scientists who don't study climate along with earth scientists who do when considering the consensus view, as those who don't study climate are not considered climate experts. When I want an opinion on a technical subject, I'll take that of an expert over a non-expert every single time.   

ROBERT REES: "In fact, this study that showed the 97%, when you look at the entire study, it shows that out of the people that responded, which was once again only 30% of the individuals who responded, 3,000 out of 10,000 that responded. Out of those 3,000, 66% of those guys who responded, or gals, actually had papers that said man-made global warming was not, or man's involvement was not the cause of global warming. So actually, the science isn't split, you're right, most of them actually say it's not man-made global warming, according to the same study that you're citing."

This is the point where I facepalm so hard that I nearly knock myself from my chair. Nowhere in the study does it say that 66% of the respondents published papers showing that man is not the cause of global warming. I don't know if the Heartland Institute provided Robert with this phony statistic, or if he simply pulled it from his bottom end, but that number makes no sense in light of the fact that 82% of all the respondents agreed that humans are significantly contributing to global warming. With that being the case, how could one explain that 66% also published papers showing that humans are not contributing? It simply defies basic logic. This facepalm is definitely going to leave a mark.

ROBERT REES: "When you whittle it down to 79 particular individuals, yep, 97% of them said it's man-made global warming. I didn't want to talk about that but when I saw the text I was like, oh give me a break. Using way old outdated data, data that was skewed in the first place."

2009 wasn't that long ago, and obviously the only one skewing the numbers is Robert Rees; science denier, and statistics manufacturer extraordinaire.

For more entertainment, and facepalming, here's Robert talking again more recently about this same study:

ROBERT REES: "Oh, the science is settled, really? According to one study the science is settled? 97% of scientists agree? Once again, that study was sent out to thousands and thousands of climate scientists, and they narrowed down the results to like 70. Oh, we don't like all these thousands of people's other answers, we're gonna take these 70 people's answer and finish out the study, and say the science is settled."

This statement completely misrepresents the Doran study. The study was sent out to earth scientists, of which a small percentage were actual climate scientists. Overall, 82% of those who responded agreed that humans are significantly contributing to climate change, and of those respondents who are actively publishing climate scientists, 97% agreed that humans are significantly contributing to climate change. Either way you look at it, even if you ignore the 79 climate scientists in the sample, earth scientists as a whole, according to the study, overwhelmingly agree that humans are significantly contributing to climate change.

So once again, in 2009, we have a study that finds a strong consensus view among earth scientists, and like the Oreskes study, an even stronger consensus among actual climate scientists.

Anderegg et al., 2010

In 2010, a study titled Expert Credibility in Climate Change was published by the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious organization begun in 1863 by then president Abraham Lincoln. I'll let the abstract speak for itself:

"Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in their field support the tenets of Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of convinced researchers."

So, despite Robert's claim to the contrary, three studies, and no indication whatsoever of a split in the science. And the Anderegg study actually corroborates the Doran study's 97% number. So much for Robert's claim that the Doran study was debunked.

Cook et al., 2013

Just last year, a consensus study titled Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature was published in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Like the Oreskes study, it looked at published climate research over a period of time. Whereas the Oreskes study looked at a decade of research, the Cook study looked back over two decades (1991-2011). Cook and his team identified 11,944 papers related to "global climate change" or "global warming" over the 20 year period. They then reviewed those papers and categorized them as to whether they endorsed human caused global warming, were neutral, rejected it, or stated that they were uncertain. They also contacted the authors to allow them to rate their own papers, so as to reduce the possibility of falsely attributing an incorrect viewpoint to a paper. What they found was that of those papers that did in fact take a position on the cause of climate change, 97.2% endorsed the view that humans are significantly contributing to climate change.

So again, contrary to the viewpoint expressed by the Heartland Institute via Robert Rees, here is yet another study that corroborates the results of other studies, thus demonstrating a strong consensus view on the part of publishing climate scientists that humans are a major contributor to climate change.

What should be obvious to anyone reading this far, is that Robert's claim that the 97% consensus number is derived from a single study is false. As I've shown throughout this essay, there are multiple studies that have been undertaken in an attempt to quantify the scientific consensus on climate change.

What should also be obvious is that Robert's claim that the Doran study has been debunked is also false. Independent studies that converge upon very similar results, despite using completely different research methods, provide a compelling reason to accept that those studies - each of them - is an accurate reflection of reality.

As a final thought, take a look at how Cities 92.9 chose to describe the segment in which Robert made his false claims about the scientific consensus:

"Studies are showing that scientists don't believe climate change is man-made, and yet that's not what is reported."

That's not what gets reported for a very simple reason; it isn't true. But that doesn't stop Cities 92.9 from reporting it.

The misinformation that comes out of this station on any given broadcast day is absolutely staggering.

Local Conservative Voice Discovers Dark Energy

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid" - Benjamin Franklin

Robert Rees, conservative host of the Morning Rush on Cities 92.9, a.k.a the news and misinformation of Bloomington Normal, continues his campaign of embarrassingly stupid commentary. To wit:

ROBERT REES: Illinois researchers are collaborating with scientists across the globe in their new project aimed at studying the universe and dark energy. Honestly, I think that's probably the first time I'd ever heard of dark energy. I'm not a real big space dude. I'm not a space geek. But, I usually have my pulse on most things. First time I ever heard of dark energy. And so I had to google it. Define dark energy for me google! This is what google tells me; it's a theoretical repul... wait, did he say theoretical? Did Mr. google just tell me theoretical? And so we're gonna study something that's theoretical? Oh my head is starting to hurt. I hope that taxpayer dollars do not go into this research and study. But it probably is. So yes, it's a theoretical repulsive force that counteracts gravity. Nothing can counteract gravity! What are you talking about? When I saw it, honestly, my first thought I swear, my first thought was black magic.

So, in the addled mind of the Local Conservative Voice, taxpayer money shouldn't be used to study things that are theoretical. Let that sink in for a moment, then take a look at two theoretical concepts that wouldn't receive public funding if conservatives like Robert Rees directed the funding for scientific research:

Germ Theory of Disease - This theory forms the basis for the modern understanding that germs play a major role in the acquisition of disease.

Gravitational Theory - This theory forms the basis for our ability to put humans on the moon and land robots on the surface of Mars.

You'd be hard pressed to find a living person who hasn't benefited in some way from one or both of these concepts, and gosh, according to Robert Rees, they aren't worthy of public funding, because hey, they're only theoretical.

What Robert fails to understand is that in science, a theory is a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for observations. That means that when something is referred to in science as theoretical, it is because it is the best explanation for the known evidence. Since dark energy is supported by multiple lines of independent evidence, it makes sense to refer to it in the theoretical sense. And since dark energy is theorized to make up the vast majority of our universe, and since we could all benefit from a better understanding of its characteristics, it makes perfect sense to publicly fund this study.

This profound ignorance that Robert expresses is not uncommon in conservative circles. Yes, there are liberals who are just as stupid, but it has become a badge of honor in conservative circles to reject and stay ignorant of science.

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."

Local Conservative Voice Hosts a Merchant of Doubt - Part I

"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' [linking smoking with disease] that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."  - Statement contained in a 1969 internal memo of American tobacco company Brown and Williamson.

On December 2nd, I was tipped off by the host of The Morning Rush - a local radio show - that author Steve Goreham would be appearing on the show the following day. The radio station, Cities 92.9, which identifies itself as the "news and talk of Bloomington Normal", is one that I listen to regularly, although I prefer to call it the news and misinformation of Bloomington Normal, primarily because of the misinformation it dishes out during talk segments, particularly when those segments deal with science.

Robert Rees, the host of The Morning Rush, provided me with the tip about the interview during an email exchange we were having about global warming. Robert had made some rather dubious claims on-air a couple weeks prior, and I had contacted him via email to give him the opportunity to clarify his position prior to criticizing those claims online. Like I said, my email to Robert was about claims he had made about global warming, which had nothing to do with Steve Goreham. It was only after Robert suggested that I might be interested in the Steve Goreham interview the following day, that Steve Goreham became a topic in our discussion. Prior to Robert bringing him up, I had never heard of the guy, and had no knowledge of a prior interview with him in the past, or that he had an impending interview with him the following day. These facts are important to remember because of some statements Robert made the following day while interviewing Steve Goreham. I'll address those statements later in this piece, as they provide a glimpse into the psyche of a guy who by all reasonable standards, plays very loosely with facts.

After Robert tipped me off about the interview, I decided to see what I could find out about Steve Goreham on line. Robert had stated that Steve Goreham was the author of a book called Climatism, which sounded vaguely familiar to me. After doing a basic google search, and finding the web page for Climatism, I realized why. I had touched on this book briefly in a prior piece that was critical of Robert's resources. In fact, I had dismissed the book as rubbish based solely on the author's own definition of the term climatism, which he describes as follows:

"The belief that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are destroying Earth's climate."

Why did I dismiss the book because of this description? Because it is a strawman. No one who knows anything about the science behind global warming believes that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are destroying Earth's climate. What they believe is that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are changing the Earth's climate, at a rate unparalleled by historical natural means, a belief by the way that is supported by empirical evidence. Goreham's use of the term destroy, rather than change, shows he's either intellectually dishonest, or ignorant, neither of which entices me, or should entice anyone for that matter, to read his book. Call me odd, but I like my science with a heavy dose of honesty.

And of course, there's more, much more.

Steve Goreham has a M.S. in Electrical Engineering, and a MBA, both of which help in the argument that Steve Goreham is no dummy, but oddly enough, he has no credentials related to climate science. Of course, that doesn't disqualify him from having an opinion on the matter, after all, I don't have any credentials related to climate science either. But I don't publish books on the subject, and travel the countryside giving talks where I'm introduced as a climate expert, as Steve Goreham often is.

Many of Steve Goreham's speaking engagements are hosted by the Heartland Institute, an organization that receives millions from Exxon Mobile and the Koch brothers, both of whom have a financial interest in stalling or stopping regulations related to CO2. To get a feel for the type of organization that the Heartland Institute is, one need look no further than their recent billboard campaign. From the Wikipedia description:

"On May 4, 2012, the institute launched a digital billboard ad campaign in the Chicago area featuring a photo of Ted Kaczynski, (the "Unabomber" whose mail bombs killed three people and injured 23 others), and asking the question, "I still believe in global warming, do you? The institute planned for the campaign to feature murderer Charles Manson, communist leader Fidel Castro and perhaps Osama bin Laden, asking the same question."

There was a silver lining to the billboard campaign however, because of it, Heartland lost a significant number of corporate donors, and with that, significant funding. What they didn't lose was a guy named Steve Goreham, who appeared later that same month to speak at the Heartland Institute's 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). That alone speaks volumes about Steve Goreham.

So there I sat with the knowledge that Steve Goreham, the author of Climatism, and good friend of the Heartland Institute, was going to be sitting down to an interview the following day with our own local science denier, Robert Rees. I wanted badly to ask Steve Goreham a question, but I knew I'd be at work during the interview, and Robert probably wouldn't take calls anyway, as I'd never heard him take calls during an interview before. So, I sat down, and I composed a question that I wanted to hear Steve answer, and I emailed it to Robert. To my surprise, Robert asked my question. The question and answer are interesting, and I will address those soon enough, but what I want to address now is how Robert presented my question.

As I pointed out in the second paragraph above, I had never heard of Steve Goreham prior to Robert's email, and my question was composed and emailed back that same night, which was the night before the interview. Here's how Robert introduced my question:

Well, let me uh, let me start right off here because you are the, I said you're the director of Climate Science Coalition of America, and I had uh some people email me after the last time I had you on, and I want to kind of go back to some of their, some of their stuff, cause I had some, I don't know I'd call them attacks or whatever. I figured hey, let's go ahead and put it out here so I'm not being totally biased, even though I, I think these are a bunch of crazy whackos, I call them Earth lickers by the way, I think I told you that before, the uh, climate alarmists.

Did you catch that? Robert started the interview by lying to his guest.

He insinuated that my question was the result of a previous interview with Steve Goreham, and that he'd been hanging onto it ever since. He could have told Mr. Goreham that he and I were discussing climate change the night before, that Mr. Goreham's interview the following day came up, and that I had requested that he ask Mr. Goreham a question, after all, that would have been truthful. But he didn't do that, instead he chose to lie. Why lying came easier than telling the truth is anyone's guess, although, it could be that the inhabitants of Planet Robert just don't care much about the truth.

In Part II of this series, I'll post the question I emailed to Robert, along with Steve Goreham's answer. I think you'll find as I did that Steve does a wonderful job in the interview of exposing himself, not as an expert in the science of climate, but as an expert in the art of obfuscation.

Steve Goreham is no dummy, he knows that his craft is very profitable when put into the service of peddling doubt.

Oh look, there goes Steve now.

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.

Local Conservative Voice, Global Conservative Lies

"Guys like you are in the reality-based community...which is filled with people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore, we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to study what we do." - Karl Rove, to a reporter from The New York Times Magazine during a 2004 interview.

During my morning commute to work, I tune in to the Morning Rush with Robert Rees, a local radio show in the Bloomington/Normal area of central Illinois, where I live and work.

The show is part of Cities 92.9, a Fox affiliate,  and as one would expect from anything associated with  Fox; conservatively biased broadcasting takes place 24/7, with intermittent whining of bias in the media. Self awareness is not one of its strengths.

Robert Rees
(Photo courtesy TheRobertRees)

I started tuning in to the Morning Rush about 8 months ago - purely by accident - while searching for a news channel. I thought I had found one with Cities, but that was only because I had tuned in during one of their brief news segments. The real treat started when the announcer introduced "local conservative voice, Robert Rees." It didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't going to be learning anything about reality on this station. If anything, I was going to be treated to a heavy dose of spin and misinformation. You see, Robert exhibits what I call "I have no idea what I'm talking about, I don't know that I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm going to share my uninformed opinion anyway, and anyone who disagrees with me is stupid." In other words, he's pretty typical as far as Fox affiliated talking heads go. I will give him credit for one thing, he definitely does know stupid, he just doesn't realize how close to home that knowledge is.

I should note here that I'll be quoting Robert throughout this essay, and I want to make clear that the quotes are taken directly from podcasts posted to Cities 92.9. If you find the quotes to be slightly incoherent, I assure you it isn't due to my translation, Robert just tends to ramble incoherently.

I tuned in to Cities on March 27th of this year to hear Robert ranting - as he often does - about global warming. You see, Robert thinks like many on the right that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a hoax, despite an overwhelming consensus to the contrary among tens of thousands of climate scientists worldwide. Let that sink in for a moment; the vast majority of the world's experts in climate science (about 97% last time I checked) say the Earth is warming due to human activities, and Robert says their wrong. What expertise does Robert bring to the table in defense of his position? Well, according to his biography, two years as a missionary in the Philippines right out of high school, followed by a string of failed business ventures, followed by a radio career that has culminated in slinging right wing talking points. He claims he's not anti-science, but what else would he have us call someone who denies 150 plus years of climate science, and regularly attacks the integrity of the scientists that have produced that science?

So, what was the source of this particular rant by Robert? Well, it was an article that appeared in the Daily Mail, which is a conservative British tabloid. That article referenced a newly released climate study by posting the following headline:

Is this finally proof we're NOT causing global warming? The whole of the Earth heated up in medieval times without CO2 emissions, says new study

That headline grabbed a lot of attention among both science deniers and scientists, but for completely different reasons. Science deniers, like Robert, found solace in a headline that seemed to vindicate their ideological position. Actual climate scientists knew better, and so did I, but that didn't stop this Fox affiliate, and many others, from uncritically passing this headline off to conservative households nationwide. What follows is the story of how Robert Rees chose to pass that story along on his show, which unfortunately for him, was being broadcast from my radio.

As I tuned in that morning, Robert was complaining about a new EPA regulation that would require future power plants to capture and store emitted CO2:

"Look at the AP, how they're just spinning this story. The first limits ever on heat trapping pollution. Heat trap that, what does that even mean? What does that word even, what does that phrase even mean? Heat trapping pollution? That doesn't even make any sense. Uh, pollution is usually something that is dirty, right? Something that is dirty and is bogging up the atmosphere. Well this is heat trapping pollution, hmm. So it's pollution that dirties up the atmosphere, that also traps heat, ok. Is that what we're talking about? Alright, well, here's the problem. They're talking about carbon dioxide. How the freak is carbon dioxide bad for the atmosphere? Oh, well it's heat trapping. Yeah, but it's not pollution, so leave it alone. It's good for the plants, and vegetation, and trees. Ugh."

Notice how Robert calls it spin to identify CO2 as heat trapping pollution, but fails to recognize that inventing his own definition for pollution - so that it fits into his right wing narrative - is spin. I checked with multiple sources for a definition of pollution, and nowhere was it limited to things that are "bad for the atmosphere". Most 5th graders could identify the flaws in that definition. It's not the atmosphere we're concerned about Robert, it's how changes to that atmosphere affect the health and welfare of living things, which is why the EPA's definition makes much more sense than yours does:

"Air pollution occurs when the air contains gases, dust, fumes or odour in harmful amounts. That is, amounts which could be harmful to the health or comfort of humans and animals or which could cause damage to plants and materials." - EPA 

Keeling Curve

Scientific research indicates that CO2 has historically been the principle control knob for the Earth's temperature. Since CO2 is known to be on the rise in both the atmosphere and the oceans, and the outcome of that rise is known to do more harm than good to living things, it makes perfect sense to classify CO2 as a pollutant, and to take action to reduce the levels of CO2 being pumped into the environment. This is all perfectly reasonable to reasonable people, but Robert works for Fox, and Fox doesn't hire reasonable people.

Robert continued his rant about the EPA regulation, complaining that it was going to increase production costs of electricity, thereby increasing the cost of electricity to consumers, and make it harder for new start up companies. On these points, Robert was correct. Nobody that I'm aware of on the pro AGW side of things (Earth lickers, according to Robert) argues that mitigating CO2 won't raise prices on energy. The argument is that not mitigating will cost much, much more in the long run. Demagogues like Robert don't acknowledge that argument, because then they'd have to address the fact that their position of doing nothing is actually the more costly one.

During his rant, things took a very bizarre turn when Robert took a call from a listener named Ed. I didn't expect much from an audience receptive to Robert's demagoguery, but nothing prepared me for the level of ignorance displayed by the conversation that followed. Ed claimed the CO2 collected would just end up leaking anyway, which would lead to a massive oasis at the source of the leak, and then, liberals would start complaining about all the moisture that would presumably come about by this massive bit of plant growth. And just when I thought things couldn't possibly get any more ridiculous, Robert laughed as he anticipated watermelons as big as houses due to all that CO2 in and around the cave where the CO2 is stored. This was the first time I can recall facepalming while driving (FWD).  Scary stuff.

"There is a new study that has come out to show, once again, global warming is not man made"

I was surprised to hear Robert make this statement, especially with the inclusion of the phrase  "once again" as though other studies exist that cast doubt on the human contribution to global warming. They don't exist, of course, which means Robert was confused, or lying, or both.

"We have the NASA that has shown studies that came out last year that shows that the rising temperature of the Earth is only gone up like 0.3 degrees fahrenheit, and that's not enough for man to be affecting it"

I don't think Robert understands that the amount of the rise in temperature is irrelevant as to whether the rise is being caused by humans. What humans control is the amount of CO2 they add to the atmosphere, it's simple physics after that.

John Tyndall

Thanks to the work of physicist John Tyndall, we've known since 1859 that CO2 absorbs and retains heat. The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more heat that will be retained. So out of the chute, Robert's statement is pure bunkum. Just for fun though, I decided to fact check Robert's number that the Earth's temperature has only gone up by 0.3 degrees. And since Robert mentioned NASA, that seemed like an appropriate place to look.

Lucky for those of us who do judiciously study discernible reality, NASA has put together an excellent resource about climate change. Highly visible across the top of their page are 5 areas in which climate change has had an effect. One of those categories is global temperature, which according to NASA, has increased by 1.5 degrees fahrenheit since 1880. The only mention of a temperature change near 0.3 degrees (as mentioned by Robert), is the top 700 meters of the ocean, which has increased by this amount since 1969. Nowhere on NASA's site do they mention anything about those amounts being too small for man to have contributed. Interestingly, what they do say is this:

"The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years."

One would think that NASA would be aware of the results of their own studies, so it seems odd that their conclusion should be so much different from the one Robert presented. So either NASA is lying, or Robert is. I'll leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusion.

Then Robert goes on to talk about the study described in the Daily Mail's article:

"The medieval warm period according to Zunli Lu at Syracuse University in New York state has said that approximately 500,000 years ago there was a warming of the planet and it wasn't just in Europe. Now, the current IPCC says that the Medieval warm period was confined to just Europe, therefore the warming we're experiencing now is a man made phenomenon caused by carbon dioxide." Well, professor Lu from Syracuse has shown that this isn't true. He says the evidence lies within a rare mineral called ikaite."

There are a number of things factually wrong with Robert's statement, which I'll address one at a time:

First, the medieval warm period was a period of increased warming in some parts of the globe, most notably, in the Northern Atlantic region. This warming occurred between the years of 950 CE and 1100 CE, which was closer to 900 years ago, not 500,000.

Second,  the IPCC report does not say that the medieval warm period was confined to just Europe. What it does say is this:

"The uncertainties associated with present palaeoclimate estimates of NH (Northern Hemisphere) mean temperatures is significant, especially for the period prior to 1600 when data are scarce (Mann et al., 1999; Briffa and Osborn, 2002; Cook et al., 2004a). However, figure 6.10 shows that the warmest period prior to the 20th century occurred between 950 and 1100, but temperatures were probably between 0.1 C and 0.2 C below the 1961 to 1990 mean and significantly below the level shown by instrumental data after 1980."

Figure 6.10

"In order to reduce the uncertainty, further work is necessary to update existing records, many of which were assembled up to 20 years ago, and to produce many more, especially early, palaeoclimate series with much wider geographic coverage. There are far from sufficient data to make any meaningful estimates of global medieval warmth (figure 6.11). There are very few long records with temporal resolution data from the oceans, the tropics or the SH (Southern Hemisphere)."

Figure 6.11

"The evidence currently available indicates that NH mean temperatures during the medieval times (950 - 1100) were indeed warm in a 2-kyr context and even warmer in relation to the less sparse but still limited evidence of widespread average cool conditions in the 17th century (Osborn and Briffa, 2006). However, the evidence is not sufficient to support a conclusion that hemispheric mean temperatures were as warm, or the extent of warm regions as expansive, as those in the 20th century as a whole, during any period in the medieval times (Jones et al., 2001; Bradley et al., 2003a,b; Osborn and Briffa, 2006)."

In other words, the IPCC report acknowledges a high level of uncertainty about the global extent of the medieval warm period, and because of that uncertainty, suggests more study is necessary. Despite Robert's conservative spin, that doesn't translate into this:

"the current IPCC says that the Medieval warm period was confined to just Europe, therefore the warming we're experiencing now is a man made phenomenon caused by carbon dioxide"

There is a translation for Robert's statement though, it's called a misrepresentation of fact. Some might even call it a lie.

And there's something else that should be understood about the medieval warm period: there are known mechanisms for that warming. Scientists have evidence of increased solar output, less volcanic activity, and changes in ocean circulation that all occurred during the Medieval Warming Period, all of which can contribute to a warming effect without greenhouse gases. So even if the warming was global, which evidence suggests it was not, it still wouldn't discount the effect of greenhouse gases on today's warming.

And finally, Robert did what many right wing outlets did, he misrepresented Zunli Lu's research paper:

"Well, professor Lu from Syracuse has shown that this isn't true. He says the evidence lies within a rare mineral called ikaite. What they found is that the entire earth heated up, not just Europe during the warming phase of the medieval period."

When Zunli Lu discovered that his research was being misrepresented by right wing media outlets, he posted the following statement on the Syracuse University website:

Zunli Lu

"It is unfortunate that my research, "An ikaite record of late Holocene climate at the Antarctic Peninsula," recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, has been misrepresented by a number of media outlets.

Several of these media articles assert that our study claims the entire Earth heated up during medieval times without human CO2 emissions. We clearly state in our paper that we studied one site at the Antarctic Peninsula. The results should not be extrapolated to make assumptions about climate conditions across the entire globe. Other statements, such as the study "throws doubt on orthodoxies around global warming," completely misrepresent our conclusions. Our study does not question the well-established anthropogenic warming trend."

He also posted the following to his facebook page:

"Anyone knows journalism help me understand this? Is this what reporters do these days? Add a conclusion, that they like, to other people's work remotely related to the topic, coin a flashy title, and make it big news?"

Here's the real kicker to this whole "news story" about Zunli Lu's study. If you go beyond the headline in the Daily Mail article, and read the actual content of the story, you'll find that the headline - the one Robert relied on for the basis of his entire argument - is contradicted by the story itself. Deep within the article, safely tucked away from the prying eyes of conservatives looking to confirm their own biases in false headlines, is the following sentence:

"Lu says his research has no direct bearing on the current climate, and points out that his research is restricted to one area in Antarctica and is not proof that the whole Earth warmed up. "

This sentence alone proves Robert didn't bother to read beyond the headline. Imagine that.

Robert often says on his show that he's not there to inform, he's just there to start the conversation. But what does it mean to start a conversation with a false narrative? Isn't that the opposite of informing? Isn't that what's known as misinforming? Would it be too much to ask a guy like Robert to fact check his stories first? Or to at least read beyond the headlines? And what can be said of someone who relies on tabloid headlines for his science, and as a justification to attack science? Pro science? I think not.

Robert then wrapped up the segment with the following diatribe:

"The research was recently published online in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters and will appear in print April 1st, so you can believe that April 1st coming over the weekend, when this comes out, the liberal left is going to be doing everything they can to hide this, to cover it up, because this goes right against everything they've been trying to do. This goes right against the EPA regulations that President Obama is putting into place right now. It goes right in the face of all this green car movement and everything they're trying to do with that on making our cars lighter and things in order to get better gas mileage. It just flies in the face of all this stuff. Because if man is not the cause of global warming, then what have we been doing for all these years now, trying to reduce our quote, carbon footprint. It's a hoax. It's a hoax and it's a tragedy that we've been wasting so much time with this up to this point already. Look, do I want to have a fuel efficient vehicle, absolutely. But it's not because of carbon, it's because I want to save money in the gas tank. Do I want to have a fuel efficient vehicle, sure, because I still want to be resourceful, I still want to be conservative when it comes to conserving the resources of the planet. But to do so at the uh, using a false premise, is wrong."

Fancy that, Robert Rees talking about how tragic it is to waste ones time doing things based on false premises, after spending an entire talking segment doing exactly that, and using that false premise to attack the left, and impugn the integrity of climate scientists the world over. And then, to top it all off,  accusing his political opponents of wanting to cover this story up. The only people with a motive for covering this story up are people like Robert, unless he gets a thrill from having his attempts at spreading misinformation displayed on the internet.

One final thought regarding Robert Rees; as a member of the reality based community, I can honestly say that Robert is more of an informer than he thinks he is. He provides an invaluable peek into the fantasy world that is the modern conservative mindset; a place where reality is dictated by ideology, not by what can be discerned through judicious study. And for that, he provides a valuable public service.