That Explains Everything

What He Said

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ROBERT REES: "And you my dear sir are reading very old outdated data.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.

From the Department of What Were They Thinking?!?

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."

Happy New Year!