The CNN left/right debate show Crossfire was off for a while last month, apparently because there’s no way to “debate” the search for a missing plane. The show returned this week, and Tuesday’s show (5/6/14) illustrated another issue that should be considered beyond the realm of the “both sides” TV debate: climate change.
Instead, the show pitted TV science host Bill Nye against Nick Loris of the conservative Heritage Foundation.
You may have gotten a sense of the show’s direction from the announcement at the top: “What’s worse for America’s economy: the dangers of climate change or the solutions?” Obviously, Loris–whose specialty is evidently economics–was going to argue the latter.
His employer has been a key player in the climate change denial industry; as Media Matters (11/28/11) documented, Heritage was arguing in 2010 that the “only consensus over the threat of climate change that seems to exist these days is that there is no consensus.” The organization has received funding from the likes of ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. Loris himself worked at the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation before moving over to Heritage in 2007.
Loris, like others in the climate “skeptic” crowd, was quick to point out that he’s no denier:
I’m not a denier. I’m not a skeptic. What I’m saying is climate is changing, yes. Man-made emissions are some part of that, but we haven’t seen these extreme weather event trends. The observed data doesn’t prove that.
But for someone who’s not a climate change denier, he sure sounded like one–claiming that “we’ve had Arctic ice globally increasing,” that “prohibiting building of new coal-fire power plants is just going to make us less equipped…to handle these problems,” and arguing that “we’ve had this 16-to-17-year hiatus in warming that the climate model has predicted.”
As Mother Jones‘ Chris Mooney (5/7/14) pointed out, the ice talking point is highly misleading. (Skeptical Science offers a good explanation.) The supposed pause in global warming is similarly deceptive (FAIR Blog, 10/1/13); average global surface temperatures have been climbing upwards since the 1950s. The supposed “pause” has been concocted by starting the clock at 1998, an unusually warm year (though not the hottest on record; 2005 and 2010 were both hotter).
So for someone who’s “not a denier,” Loris sure sounds a lot like one. This gets back to the problem with these “debates” over climate change, which elevate a marginal, industry-backed viewpoint to more or less equal standing with the overwhelming scientific consensus.
It’s enough to make you wish Crossfire would take another break–or at least decide that the climate crisis demands an entirely different sort of debate. Given that this isn’t the first time they’ve done this–earlier this they were debating whether a cold snap would “put the climate change debate in the deep freeze” (FAIR Blog, 1/8/14)–it’s hard to have high hopes.
The reason that the phrase “Global Warming Deniers” is used is that the “Deniers” ignore demonstrable evidence and fabricate stories that are not true.
For example, Loris’ assertion that
“we’ve had this 16-to-17-year hiatus in warming”
is NOT true.
Despite the fantasies of Global Warming Deniers, the earth continues to warm at the rate of 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second – running 24/7 – including the years from 1998 to present.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/4-Hiroshima-bombs-worth-of-heat-per-second.html
Earth’s Rate Of Global Warming Is 400,000 Hiroshima Bombs A Day
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/22/3089711/global-warming-hiroshima-bombs/#
Four Hiroshima bombs a second: How we imagine climate change
http://phys.org/news/2013-08-hiroshima-climate.html
This measured/observed warming rate is via the Argo buoy system. http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/About_Argo.html
2005 was warmer than any previous year. Then 2010 broke the 2005 record. Data at:
NOAA/National Climate Data Center
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/anomalies.php
2012 was the warmest year on record for the United States.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/ncdc-announces-warmest-year-record-contiguous-us
Sea level continues to rise due to thermal expansion and glacial melting. The rate of sea level rise has quadrupled since the 1870 to 1924 period.
Columbia University
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/SeaLevel/
Glaciers continue to melt, and the rate of melting has accelerated since 1998.
World Glacier Monitoring Service
http://www.wgms.ch/mbb/sum12.html
Ocean heating has accelerated sharply since 1998. (Note: Over 90% of Global Warming ends up heating the oceans.)
Graph at:
http://www.durangobill.com/GwdLiars/GwdOceanHeat.jpg
Full peer reviewed paper at:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/full
Up to date info at:
NOAA/National Oceanographic Data Center
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/ (click on “2”)
Finally, November 2013 just set a record for the warmest November in history.
NOAA/National Climate Data Center
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/11/
More at:
http://www.durangobill.com/GwdLiars/GwdGlobalWarmingStoppedIn1998.html
Loris may claim not be a denier, but the claim not to be a (real) skeptic seems correct. Try the term pseudoskeptic instead:
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/04/18/pseudoskeptics-are-not-skeptics
Nye motives I’m sure are not nefarious .. however, he might consider the pro/com of getting into obviously tilted, even rather silly situations like this .. it’s rather like agreeing to put on the clown suit, THEN ‘debate’ . // WHO and WHAT is important, here? .. certainly NOT two ‘sides’ preaching to the converted … I find this kind of ‘journalism’ nothing more than Koch Bro style ‘dust in the eyes’ , of an increasingly confused, diffused, and frankly , outrightly demented population.
Again, the loud interruptions by smarmy anti science and discourteous CNN hostess Cupp didn’t trump Nye’s reason, fact or science. The positive thing about these anti science types is most of them drive over the horizon and fall off the edge of the earth.
I care deeply about environmental quality and it has been an important issue to me for the last 45 years. Unfortunately, while I generally like Bill Nye, but he and others are in political “denial.” They have too much faith in their own version of the “story.” We are all fallible, including “scientists.” While yelling louder they refuse to understand the important point that doom, gloom, and disaster and suggesting draconian tactics are always eventually counter-productive. For every convert they make they also convince someone else to “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow” disaster will strike anyway. Those they actually attack become more adamant in response. This leads to polarization and legislative gridlock.
Ecology is about studying and influencing a dynamic equilibrium in the environment and politics. Severe weather events have always happened and will continue to do so. Using individual, or limited clusters of, weather events as fodder for opportunistic, scare-tactics, won’t work because “cold” events (Great Lakes Freezing) happen too often to be ignored. Moderation, education in calm-tones, and compromise will be much more effective in our society in the long-run. People need to not only believe change is necessary, but that it is possible and good. They need to see successful models and celebrate that progress. We will not be successful in preserving a static system, but we may be successful in working-with and adapting to our dynamic world.
Moderation, education in calm-tones, and compromise will be much more effective in our society in the long-run. People need to not only believe change is necessary, but that it is possible and good.
Tell you what, you grasshoppers just keep chirping that everything is going to be fine, and suddenly “GOD” or mankind will jump up and turn off the heater in time….. while the Ants get on with making the world work, and you the grasshoppers perish because you really, really believe in Tinkerbell.
Or maybe they should frame it as” Diehard conspiracy theorists and believers in the great global warming hoax”.Here is another thing to think about.IF you believe in it their is but one way to stop it.An invasion of China…….You first