Other Deliberate Denials of the Scientific Evidence of Climate Change

Let’s summarize the point of the last few posts. 

Many uncertainties exist in the scientific basis for the conclusions expressed in the IPCC reports. Reputable scientists, seeking the truth, or at least greater certainty, continue carrying on research in appropriate fields. This continuing work is submitted to peer reviewed scientific journals. 

Those individuals who doubt the validity of the IPCC conclusions can generate and submit their own evidence to the peer review system. 

Or they can participate in flooding the public media (avoiding the peer reviewed scientific media) with misinformation, unsupported “facts,” and irrelevant statements. 

(See, for example, the “hacked email scandal” referred to earlier by Sarah Palin: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/04/MNRL1AV3Q1.DTL) aimed at producing further doubt in the minds of those who would like to form their own opinion of the status of Global Warming research.

As another  example of a campaign of deliberate disinformation, the work of climate scientist Mojib Latif has been misrepresented in a manner to support the “global warming is a hoax” position. 

In an interview on All Things Considered on NPR, Latif clarifies that his data, showing that ocean temperatures have been relatively stable over the ten years from 2000 to 2010 (and so, not warming), cannot be used to argue about the validity of long-term global warming. A portion of the interview is available from the link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120668812&ft=1&f=1007 )

From the Mother Jones website (Go to  http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/01/daily-mail-bends-science-support-global-cooling for a more complete report) we find a brief summary of the Latif controversy:

Daily Mail Bends Science to Support 'Global Cooling'

By Ben Buchwalter, Jan. 12, 2010

The deniers are at it again.

This winter's cold spell, which chilled folks in England, the Midwest, and even Florida farm country, has led a prominent European scientist to argue that global warming has ended and that we're in for 30 years of global cooling. Or at least that's what Britain's Daily Mail says. 

The scientist, Professor Mojib Latif of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the Mail that "winters like this one will become much more likely."

In addition to a 2008 report that is widely mischaracterized as proof that warming has slowed, this led the Mail, whose report was later picked up by Fox News, to claim that such statements could prove that the threat of global warming has been blown out of proportion:

“Some experts believe [that natural weather] cycles - and not human pollution - can explain all the major changes in world temperatures in the 20th century.

If true, the research challenges the science behind climate change theories, and calls into question the political measures to halt global warming.

According to some scientists, the warming of the Earth since 1900 is due to natural oceanic cycles, and not man-made greenhouse gases.

It occurred because the world was in a 'warm mode', and would have happened regardless of mankind's rising carbon dioxide production.”

But speaking to the Guardian yesterday, Latif pushed back hard against the Mail, saying that the tabloid took his comments out of context to make an editorial statement. 

"It comes as a surprise to me that people would try to use my statements to try to dispute the nature of global warming. I believe in manmade global warming. I have said that if my name was not Mojib Latif it would be ‘global warming’," he said. 

"There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases."

The misunderstanding/distortion of Latif’s study has been taken up by Global Warming deniers, and embellished to make it appear that a well-known climate scientist predicts global cooling. 

The persistent quoting of “credentialed” global warming deniers has the power to sway public opinion. Below is a letter to the editor of the San Diego Union Tribune, published on Dec. 1, 2010. 

The letter touches on two points made in the posts presented above. It repeats the misleading and irrelevant statement that CO₂ is a harmless gas, and it cites a “highly credentialed scientist,” J. Fred Singer.

Singer rows the same boat occupied by Frederick Seitz, and is his evil twin in the disinformation war against science. Let's look first at the letter:

As to J. Fred Singer, in brief one can note that Singer's early career does indeed include a string of highly respected positions in the progress and advancement of science. At some point, however, his efforts apparently turned to advocacy of the agenda of the tobacco and the fossil fuel industry. The latter part of his career seems to fall in the vein of what might be called serial denialism, particularly with respect to his positions on second hand smoke which he claims is not unhealthy and on human caused global warming which he claims is “all bunk.”

His organization, The Science and Environmental Policy Project, has been used as a platform to support his assertions. 

The fact that “second-hand smoke” and “human caused global warming” are well understood scientifically to be dangerous for varied reasons, seems to have been missed entirely by Singer.

The writer of the letter cited above refers to Naomi Oreskes as an alarmist.  She is Professor of History and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Concerned with the Bush administration's insistence that "most" scientists disagree with the notion of global warming, and with the repetition of this statement in the public media, often through letters to the editor, she did what a real scientist does—she read the science written on the subject to see what "most" scientists said about global warming. Dealing with the oft-cited argument that global warming proponents are expressing a “belief,” and not a “theory,” she stated that

No scientific conclusion can ever be proven, absolutely, but it is no more a 'belief' to say that Earth is heating up than it is to say that continents move, that germs cause disease, that DNA carries hereditary information or that quarks are the basic building blocks of subatomic matter. You can always find someone, somewhere, to disagree, but these conclusions represent our best available science, and therefore our best basis for reasoned action.

Let's end this post here. A lot of attention and detail has been given to make the point that there is a persistent and well-funded campaign of deliberate disinformation aimed at discrediting the scientific evidence that Climate Change is real, and the consequences are of great concern.