Met Office’s Richard Betts incorrectly asserts “the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice in 2007 … was then partly reversed in 2008 and 2009.”

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, January 12, 2010

Memo to media, non-cryosphere scientists:  The peer-reviewed literature does not provide support for the view that the Arctic “recovered” in 2008 — and even what happened in 2009 has now been called into question (see below).   Don’t fall into the mindset of the anti-science disinformers, who all seem to think two dimensionally.


In July 2009, leading cryoscientists at JPL, the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington, and NASA published a major peer-reviewed article, “Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 2003–2008” (discussed here) and posted this figure of Arctic ice volume:

Not bloody much “recovery” or “reversal” from 2007 to 2008.
Now Andy Revkin has just posted a typical Goldilocks piece on Dot Earth — it’s not too hot, it’s not too cold.  I don’t want to rehash all of my problems with this approach, but I will say that since the observational evidence shows that warming of the climate system is “unequivocal” — and essentially the entire scientific community and every member government of the IPCC agrees with that analysis — it is clearly reasonable for the media to discuss certain very unique, extreme weather events predicted by climate science in the context of that warming — as Revkin himself once did in discussing the remarkable extremes in Australia last year [see CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave “Hell (and High Water) on Earth” story — never mention climate change].  Since we’re not in a cooling trend, of course, it would be illogical for a competent reporter to use a cold snap as evidence of such a non-existent trend.

I want to focus on a quote he got from Richard Betts, the head of the climate impacts division at Britain’s Met Office, which shows that even the most knowledgeable climate experts don’t follow the literature as closely as they should:

One classic example is the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice in 2007, which was then partly reversed in 2008 and 2009. Although there is still definitely a declining trend in Arctic sea ice (2009 and 2008 were still the second and third lowest sea ice extents, after 2007) there was a lot of hype surrounding the 2007 minimum even though that was partly just natural variability in the Arctic climate.

Well, we’ve already seen that Betts was wrong abut the reversal in 2008.  He was focused on the two-dimensional Arctic ice coverage, and apparently missed the sharp drop in volume, which I dare say is “dramatic” and much more important.

The scientific literature has also weighed in on the cause of the 2007 decline (see “What drove the dramatic retreat of arctic sea ice during summer 2007?“). Let me quote from the Geophysical Research Letters (subs. req’d) analysis by four scientists from the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle:

A model study has been conducted of the unprecedented retreat of arctic sea ice in the summer of 2007. It is found that preconditioning, anomalous winds, and ice-albedo feedback are mainly responsible for the retreat. Arctic sea ice in 2007 was preconditioned to radical changes after years of shrinking and thinning in a warm climate.… The Arctic Ocean lost additional (sic) 10% of its total ice mass in which 70% is due directly to the amplified melting and 30% to the unusual ice advection, causing the unprecedented ice retreat. Arctic sea ice has entered a state of being particularly vulnerable to anomalous atmospheric forcing.

So, yes, that minimum was partly due to natural variability, but in fact it was mostly due to warming. 
Arguably, absent the warming trend, there’d have been exceedingly little chance of anything like the 2007 decline.

Final question:  Did the ice recover from 2008 to 2009?  To answer, that you must read the new study, “Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009” (subs. req’d), which I discussed at length here:  “Where on Earth is it unusually warm? Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, which is full of rotten ice.”

That study concluded:

Our results are consistent with ice age estimates (Fowler & Maslanik, http://nsidc.org/news/press/20091005_minimumpr.html) that show the amount of MY sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009 suggesting that MY sea ice continues to diminish rapidly in the Canada Basin even though 2009 areal extent increased over that of 2007 and 2008.

If it’s true that the amount of multiyear sea ice in the northern hemisphere was the lowest on record in 2009, then it is hard to say that there was any genuine recovery.

Second, the satellite and other measurements that suggested two-dimensional recovery of sea ice extent have been called into question.  It appears an unfortunate trick of Nature helped hide the decline of Arctic ice:

In September 2009 we observed a much different sea icescape in the Southern Beaufort Sea than anticipated, based on remotely sensed products. Radarsat derived ice charts predicted 7 to 9 tenths multi-year (MY) or thick first-year (FY) sea ice throughout most of the Southern Beaufort Sea in the deep water of the Canada Basin. In situ observations found heavily decayed, very small remnant MY and FY floes interspersed with new ice between floes, in melt ponds, thaw holes and growing over negative freeboard older ice. This icescape contained approximately 25% open water, predominantly distributed in between floes or in thaw holes connected to the ocean below. Although this rotten ice regime was quite different that the expected MY regime in terms of ice volume and strength, their near-surface physical properties were found to be sufficiently alike that their radiometric and scattering characteristics were almost identical.

Link:  http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/12/sciencerichard-betts-andy-revkin-dramatic-decline-in-arctic-sea-ice-in-2007-was-not-reversed-in-2008-2009-recovery/

And the 2009 “Citizen Kane” award for non-excellence in climate journalism goes to …

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, December 22, 2009

Okay, I think it’s pretty obvious to regular Climate Progress readers who the winner is.  Indeed, I was originally going to ask readers to vote on the winner from the top 10 list below — but it’d be like asking readers to vote for which major sports figure fell from grace farthest this year.  As always, though, I welcome your thoughts on the “winners” and any omissions.

I do a lot of media criticism, so I thought I would end the year with an award for the major media outlet and/or reporter who has moved furthest from journalistic excellence.  Next year I might name the award after this year’s winner, but for now, it’ll be named after Citizen Kane’s “Declaration of Principles,” which publisher Charles Foster Kane idealistically enunciated early on in the film classic, but later on “Without reading it, Kane tears it up, throws it into the wastebasket at his side.”  And no, I’m not including any of the “new media” in the list because none of them has even one-tenth the impact of any of the major media outlets on this list nor do most of them claim to be journalists.

And yes the entire media deserves a dishonorable mention for its generally poor coverage of climate science, politics, and economics this year:

• The clean energy revolution will not be televised, Part 2: Kathleen Hall Jamieson lambastes MSM for under-reporting climate bill
• U.S. media largely ignores latest warning from climate scientists: “Recent observations confirm … the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised” — 1000 ppm
• CNN, ABC, WashPost, AP, blow Australian wildfire, drought, heatwave “Hell (and High Water) on Earth” story — never mention climate change

Skipping the musical number I had prepared for the awards ceremony, let’s dive straight into the top ten list:

10.  Nicholas Dawidoff, the author of the NYT magazine cover profile on Freeman Dyson — not just because the piece was deeply flawed (the media does bad profiles all the time) but because the author apparently didn’t care:

• Media stunner: When asked “Does it matter, from a journalistic point of view, whether [Freeman Dyson is] right or whether he’s wrong?” his NYT profiler replies “Oh, absolutely not.”

9.  Fox News — just because they are dreadful on every subject doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be on this list:

• Fox News on EPA endangerment finding: “Some skeptics say regulating carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, may be a difficult task, especially since people emit carbon dioxide with every breath”
• Glenn Beck proves he’s a brainless frog, warning (?) “Barack Obama has galvanized the country…. He’s forced us to think!”
• Fox News blurts out its agenda: “Now that Jones has resigned, we need to follow through…. First, stop cap-and-trade, which could send these groups trillions,” and then put “the whole corrupt ‘green jobs’ concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream.”

8.  NYT’s John Tierney — the main reason he isn’t higher is that I’m not certain many people take him very seriously and his output level in print is on the low side (the second bullet below is actually from 12/26/08):

• John Tierney makes up stuff — does the New York Times employ several know/do-nothing fact checkers
• John Tierney IS the country’s worst science writer, not Gregg Easterbrook

7.  David Broder — uninterested in the gravest problem of our time (except, that is, when he writes nonsense about it), and more interested in quick decisions, than right ones:

• David Broder is the sultan of the status quo, stenographer of those centrists who are fatally uninformed about global warming
• Status-quo-media stunner: David Broder urges Obama to make a decision on Afghanistan right now, “whether or not it is right.”

6.  Rush Limbaugh — a buffoon, yes, but his remarks in this case are far beyond the pale even for his brand of extremism:

• Limbaugh to NY Times environment reporter Revkin: “Why don’t you just go kill yourself?”
• Limbaugh rejects an apology for Revkin

5.  Newsweek — they win a special award for the single worst story of the year, and make the top 5 here because it turns out they’ve been selling access to the subjects of that story:

• Newsweek gets duped by Big Oil — for real — in worst Big Media story of the year
• Media stunner: Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash, host energy and climate events with lawmakers — while publishing the uber-greenwashing story, “Big Oil Goes Green for Real”

4.  Andy Revkin — ’nuff said:

• Revkin stunner on NPR: “I’ve made missteps. I’ve made probably more mistakes this year in my print stories than I had before.”
• NYT’s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation
• NY Times spins the greatest nonstory ever told, suckering UK Guardian into printing utter BS
• Memo to George Will, WashPost: When you quote someone who is wrong, even if it is the NYT’s Andy Revkin, then you’re wrong, too
• NYT’s Revkin persists in selling spin from long-wrong deniers that the IPCC overestimates the danger from warming, when the reverse is true
• Here’s what we know so far: CRU’s emails were hacked, the 2000s will easily be the hottest decade on record, and the planet keeps warming thanks to us! The NY Times blows the story.
• Anti-science idealogues spin the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, on “Climategate”
• Unstaining Al Gore’s good name 2: He is not “guilty of inaccuracies and overstatements” and is owed a correction and apology by the New York Times
• NYT’s Revkin embraces false balance, equates Will’s active disinformation with Gore’s effort to understand and communicate climate realism
• NYT’s Revkin seems shocked, shocked by media’s own failure to explain climate threat

3.  The New York Times — the so-called paper of record publishees Dawidoff and Revkin and Tierney and much, much more that is inexplicable:

• Is the New York Times coverage of global warming fatally flawed?
• Signs of global warming are everywhere, but if the New York Times can’t tell the story (twice!), how will the public hear it?
• MacCracken: The New York Times quote did not represent my views, and it did not even represent the reporter’s attempt to portray my comments
• Grist on the NYT’s “baseless hit job on Gore,” plus the story’s origin in a Fox News doctored video
• The New York Times sells its integrity to ExxonMobil with front-page ad that falsely asserts “Today’s car has 95% fewer emissions than a car from 1970″
• Shame on the New York Times for running ExxonMobil’s greenwashing ad once again — they can’t plead ignorance this time, only greed

2 & 1.  George Will and the editors of the Washington Post.  The two are, sadly, almost inseparable.  Will is #2 for his disinformation dysentery.  The Washington Post’s senior editors are, easily, the winner of Climate Progress’s first annual Citizen Kane award for giving George Will an un-fact-checked platform again and again (while making a travesty of their letters to the editor) — as well as Lomborg and Palin and many, many others.  On the climate issue, the Washington Post editors have, shamefully, abandoned journalism:

• The day DC journalism died: Washington Post is staffed with people who found ZERO mistakes in George Will’s error-filled denial column
• In a blunder reminiscent of Janet Cooke scandal, the Washington Post lets George Will reassert all his climate falsehoods plus some new ones
• The Washington Post, abandoning any journalistic standards, lets George Will publish a third time global warming lies debunked on its own pages
• Will the Washington Post ever fact check a George Will column?
• Memo to Post: If George Will quotes a lie, it’s still a lie
• Washington Post reporters take unprecedented step of contradicting columnist George Will in a news article
• The Washington Post goes tabloid, publishes second falsehood-filled op-ed by Sarah Palin in five months — on climate science and the hacked emails!
• Gawker: The Washington Post Has the Worst Opinion Section in America
• Memo to Washington Post: Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt just recycled a right-wing WSJ op-ed. If you won’t fire him, could you move him over to obits where he can’t hurt anyone?
• WashPost recycles another denier WSJ op-ed, this time from coal apologist Bjorn Lomborg. Funny how two new senior Post editors came from the WSJ.
• Washington Post, Fred Hiatt turn op-ed page into a “joke” with yet another falsehood-filled piece attacking climate action and clean energy — by GOP quitter-in-chief Sarah “Four Pinocchios” Palin!

UPDATE:  One final note.  I am not comparing Broder and Revkin with Will and Limbaugh here, or the New York Times with Fox News.  That would be comparing apples and oranges or perhaps airplanes and oranges.  Individual rankings are based solely on an individual curve compared to where these outlets/journalists aspire.  It is precisely because the New York Times aspires much higher than everyone else, to be the so-called paper of record, that its myriad failings — despite much outstanding coverage and an excellent editorial/opinion page — give it such a high rank.

Link:  http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/22/and-the-2009-citizen-kane-award-for-non-excellence-in-climate-journalism-goes-to/

Laurie Dougherty comments on Dot Earth of The New York Times on Steve McIntyre's "mole" inside the CRU e-mails hacking job at the University of East Anglia


Link: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/roundup-copenhagen-and-climategate/?permid=77#comment77

Anti-science idealogues spin the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, on “Climategate”

Revkin quickly makes fool of Hoyt with dreadful front-page story

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, December 6, 2009
UPDATE:  With his latest story, one-time NYT science reporter Andrew Revkin embarks on a new career as drama critic — while utterly mocking Hoyt’s analysis.  I’ll discuss it at the end.

If you think the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, doesn’t have the whole story, doesn’t simply get a free pass from writing a balanced story, you should email him at public@nytimes.com.

One thing is clear from the story known as ClimateGate — the anti-science ideologues are much better at “Working the Refs“ than the climate science realists.

On his blog, DotEarth, NYT climate reporter Andy Revkin has starting turning reader comments into primary text.  Okay.  Here’s our own Ken Levenson from a comment on today’s CP post, British PM attacks “anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics” while UK Conservatives reaffirm climate science and need for “desperately urgent” Copenhagen deal:

What a breath of fresh air! Particularly after just ingesting Clark Hoyt’s pile of manure this morning.

http://”"www.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 12/ 06/ opinion/ 06pubed.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
The only good thing I can say about Hoyt’s treatment is that it unintentionally allows Andy Revkin to hang himself. Revkin is quoted at the end saying “Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement,”

EARTH TO REVKIN: THE IPCC IS THE MIDDLE GROUND AND ITS MIDDLE GROUND IS CATASTROPHE.

That Revkin betrays his inclination for the horserace over “truth” is just another nail in the coffin for his pathetic coverage. Too bad Hoyt has gotten used in the process.

I agree that Hoyt’s piece, “Stolen E-Mail, Stoking the Climate Debate,” raises questions about his own bias — and Revkin’s independence to cover the story.

What’s shocking is that Hoyt, the supposed “readers’ representative” only quotes from those who think the Times has underplayed the story, which is hardly what the independent public editor should be doing:

AS world leaders prepare to meet tomorrow in Copenhagen to address global warming, skeptics are pointing to e-mail hacked from a computer server at a British university as evidence that the conference may be much ado about nothing. They say the e-mail messages show a conspiracy among scientists to overstate human influence on the climate — and some accuse The Times of mishandling the story.

Although The Times was among the first to report on the e-mail, in a front-page article late last month, and has continued to write about the issue almost daily in the paper or on its Web site, readers have raised a variety of complaints:

Some say Andrew Revkin, the veteran environmental reporter who is covering what skeptics have dubbed “Climategate,” has a conflict of interest because he wrote or is mentioned in some of the e-mail messages that the University of East Anglia says were stolen. Others wondered why The Times did not make the e-mail available on its Web site, and scoffed at an explanation by Revkin in a blog post that they contain “private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye.” What about the Pentagon Papers? they asked.

Others contended that The Times was playing down a story with global implications, coming as world leaders consider a treaty to limit the amount of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere from autos, power plants and other sources.

Luis Alvarez Jr. of Charlottesville, Va., was outraged that a front-page article on President Obama’s pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States had not a single mention of the e-mail, in which one scientist, for example, said he had used a “trick” to “hide” a recent decline in temperatures.

Richard Murphy of Fairfield, Conn., said, “Given that the hacked e-mails cast doubt on some of the critical research that underlies the entire global warming argument, I am astounded that The Times has treated the issue in such a cavalier fashion.”

Does Revkin have a conflict of interest, as Steven Milloy, the publisher of JunkScience.com, and others contended? Why didn’t The Times put the e-mail on its Web site? And, most important, is The Times being cavalier about a story that could change our understanding of global warming? Or, as The Times’s John Broder, who covers environmental issues in Washington, put it, “When does a story rise to three-alarm coverage?”

Is that really representative of NY Times readers???  Three straight quotes from those on one side, including the uber-extreme anti-science Milloy, of whom Source Watch writes:

In January 2006, Paul D. Thacker, a journalist who specializes in science, medicine and environmental topics, reported in The New Republic that Milloy has received thousands of dollars in payments from the Phillip Morris company since the early nineties, and that NGOs controlled by Milloy have received large payments from ExxonMobil [3]. A spokesperson for Fox News stated, “Fox News was unaware of Milloy’s connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed.”

Hmm.  I found that in 30 seconds using Google.  If Fox News thinks references to Milloy need to include his affiliations, perhaps the public editor of the NY Times might to the same.

I’m gonna give Hoyt a pass on quoting at length from “John Tierney, a Times science columnist.”  Yes, everybody who cares about science outside of the New York Times knows that he “makes up stuff, just like George Will” (see here).  But you can’t expect the public editor of the NY Times to ever believe that the so-called paper of record would actually employ on their staff the country’s worst science writer, can you? 
But you might still point out the “hide the decline” nonsense is, well, nonsense.

Someone might also point out to Hoyt that the Times has been criticized for overplaying the story (see “Here’s what we know so far: CRU’s emails were hacked, the 2000s will easily be the hottest decade on record, and the planet keeps warming thanks to us! The NY Times blows the story“):

The NYT’s Revkin has a piece whose headline and lede, typically, misses the entire point, “Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics.”  Note to Andy:  Everything fuels the disinformers! And that includes studies and data that prove the exact opposite of what they assert.

Who cares that, as Revkin says in his opening (!) sentence, this is “causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change”?  This was a chance for Revkin to make up for his misinformation-filled post from September [see "NYT’s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation"].  Even his most science-based sentence is hedged:  “But the evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so broad and deep that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument.”  Unlikely?  Ya think?

Revkin asserts in the so-called paper of record that “some of the comments might lend themselves to sinister interpretations.”  So is this a news story or just a speculative opinion piece?  Instead of saying what interpretation might be possible, why not actually talk to the authors of the emails and other scientists and report what they emails actually were meant to communicate?  Oh, wait, later in the piece he notes “But several scientists whose names appear repeatedly in the e-mails said they merely revealed that scientists are human beings, and did nothing to undercut the body of research on global warming.”  Duh.

The bigger question Hoyt and Levenson raised concerns the question “Does Revkin have a conflict of interest” covering the story?

Erica Goode, the environment editor, said that as soon as she learned that Revkin was mentioned in the scientists’ e-mail, she consulted with Philip Corbett, the standards editor. She said she read the roughly one dozen messages containing Revkin’s name and decided they showed a reporter asking for information for news articles, with “no particular close relationship with the scientists other than the fact that he knew them.” Goode and Corbett said they agreed that Revkin did not have a significant conflict and was good to go, with an acknowledgment in the article that he and other journalists were named in the e-mail.

I read all the messages involving Revkin, and I did not see anything to keep him off the story. If anything, there was an indication that the scientists whom some readers accused Revkin of being too cozy with were wary of his independence. One, Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, warned a colleague, Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia, to be careful what he shared with “Andy” because, “He’s not as predictable as we’d like.”

Hmm.  Well, it’s no shock to CP readers — or NPR listeners — that some scientists aren’t thrilled with Revkin’s unpredictably mistake-filled coverage of the science, especially the “global cooling” nonstory ]see “NYT’s Revkin pushes global cooling myth (again!) and repeats outright misinformation” and Revkin stunner on NPR: “I’ve made missteps. I’ve made probably more mistakes this year in my print stories than I had before”].

As for not posting the e-mail, Revkin said he should have used better language in his blog, Dot Earth, to explain the decision, which was driven by advice from a Times attorney. The lawyer, George Freeman, told me that there is a large legal distinction between government documents like the Pentagon Papers, which The Times published over the objections of the Nixon administration, and e-mail between private individuals, even if they may receive some government money for their work. He said the Constitution protects the publication of leaked government information, as long as it is newsworthy and the media did not obtain it illegally. But the purloined e-mail, he said, was covered by copyright law in the United States and Britain.

I think that any notion that The Times was trying to avoid publishing the e-mail messages is a manufactured issue. On Freeman’s advice, the paper linked to them — on a skeptic’s Web site as it happens — and they were a click away for anyone who wanted to examine them.

Linking to anti-science skeptics.  Awesome!

Revkin said last week on his blog that he was asking a variety of researchers if the e-mail changed our understanding of global warming. One, Roger Pielke, Sr., of the University of Colorado, who has been critical of what he called “the climate oligarchy,” including some of the scientists involved in the e-mail, replied that it did not. Pielke has characterized some scientists in the field as inbred and wedded to their views, but he said that the temperature measurement by Jones’s group was only one of several showing a long-term warming trend, and that there was no doubt that carbon dioxide produced by humans was a major factor.

Yes, Hoyt quotes from yet another person representing the confused side of the story (see “Roger Pielke Sr. also doesn’t understand the science of global warming — or just chooses to willfully misrepresent it“).
Does the public editor simply get a free pass from even bothering to write a balanced story?

But Revkin and Tierney both told me that, after that broad understanding among scientists, there is sharp debate over how fast the earth is warming, how much human activity is contributing and how severe the impact will be.

“Our coverage, looked at in toto, has never bought the catastrophe conclusion and always aimed to examine the potential for both overstatement and understatement,” Revkin said.
Goode, his editor, said: “We here at The Times are not scientists. We don’t collect the data or analyze it, and so the best we can do is to give our readers a sense of what the prevailing scientific view is, based on interviews with scientists” and the expertise of reporters like Revkin.

Again, there really isn’t a sharp debate about how severe the impact will be — if we don’t take any action at all! I have now emailed Revkin twice on this — and both times he has published what I wrote, but still ignores the central point:

His scientific mistake is bigger. He fails to realize that listening to the conservative ideologues who claim the science if false and counsel inaction will essentially end the uncertainty about future impacts. Concentrations will rise to very high levels, in excess of 800 ppm, with catastrophic for consequences ocean acidification, sea level rise, species loss, desertification, etc.

I draw your attention to:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com…
There isn’t any uncertainty about what happens if we keep doing nothing or very little. The people who are peddling the uncertainty myth are internalizing the notion that politicians are going to start deploying multiple wedges starting almost immediately. ["Wedges" comes from an assessment by two Princeton scientists of ways to get big CO2 emission reductions from particular sectors, like transportation and efficiency (see our 2006 graphic explaining some emission wedges). Mr. Romm's posts provide good background on this thought experiment.]
This may well be my biggest disagreement with you. You understand this but you don’t convey this to your readers: Doing nothing or doing little eliminates the uncertainty.

Wedges discussion can be found here.

I challenge the Times to seriously do what Goode says:  Interview the top 100 climate scientsts and asked them to describe the future impacts if we listen to those who counsel inaction.  I dare say at least 95 would describe an unmitigated catastrophe — certainly the dozens I have interviewed in the past few years do.  Is the NYT even aware of the 13-agency report on U.S. climate impacts from earlier this year (see “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11 °F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90 °F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!“)

Indeed, a very significant fraction would describe the possibility of impacts beyond our imagination, see UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18 °F over most of U.S. and 27 °F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

Again, it’s only in the “split the baby” coverage of Revkin and the NY Times that one gets left with the false impression that doing nothing or doing little might not drastically harm the health and well-being of billions and billions of people.


Some final points.  First, I think that by writing the story this way, Hoyt has harmed his own credibility as an independent representative of NY Times readers.

Second, Hoyt has put Revkin in a no-win situation.  Revkin is now officially on record as saying his coverage “has never bought the catastrophe conclusion,” in spite of the science to the contrary.  How can he budge from that now, even as the science gets stronger and stronger that he is wrong:

• Science: CO2 levels haven’t been this high for 15 million years, when it was 5 ° to 10 °F warmer and seas were 75 to 120 feet higher — “We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in CO2 levels of about 100 ppm.”
• M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10 °F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F
• Satellite data stunner: “Our data suggest that EAST Antarctica is losing mass…. Antarctica may soon be contributing significantly more to global sea-level rise.”
• Climate science statement from the Met Office, NERC and the Royal Society: It’s the hottest decade on record and “even since the 2007 IPCC Assessment the evidence for dangerous, long-term and potentially irreversible climate change has strengthened.”

Here’s the final line in Hoyt’s piece:

So far, I think The Times has handled Climategate appropriately — a story, not a three-alarm story.

Ironically, Hoyt got the right bottom line — this isn’t a “three alarm story.”  But that wasn’t news.  It didn’t deserve a story, particularly one as flawed as the one Hoyt wrote, that simply rehashed a bunch of anti-scientific talking points with no balance or rebuttal.  Many other media outlets had already explained the story was overblown or largely irrelevant to our understanding of climate science, including the leading UK scientific journal Nature:

• Nature editorial: “Nothing in the e-mails undermines the scientific case that global warming is real — or that human activities are almost certainly the cause.”
• Washington Times:  “stolen e-mails mean less than they seem”
• Reuters: “ANALYSIS-Hacked climate e-mails awkward, not game changer”; Hackergate contest
• Hacked climate e-mail rebutted by scientists

If you think the NY Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, doesn’t have the whole story, doesn’t simply get a free pass from even bothering to write a balanced story, you should email him at public@nytimes.com.

UPDATE:  Making an utter fool of Hoyt and his ultimate conclusion that this is “not a three-alarm story,” NY Times editors publish another dreadful Revkin piece on the front page.  Interestingly, the headline of the piece (coauthored by John Broder) is actually good — “In Face of Skeptics, Experts Affirm Climate Peril.”  Too bad that isn’t quite how one-time NYT science reporter Andrew Revkin frames the piece as he embarks on a new career as drama critic.

Let me quote from Levenson again in the comments — since he “broke” this story for CP:

THE NEW YORK TIMES JUMPS THE SHARK….with it’s coverage devolving into Birther/Flat-Earther/Intelligent Design entertainment. What a public service – NOT!

Good God! – Revkin has an A1 story that concludes (in a perfect summary of this absurd article):

“Whichever view prevails, the questions will undoubtedly linger well after the negotiators who are trying to work out the complex issues that still stand in the way of an international climate treaty leave Copenhagen.”

Too bad there isn’t someone at the New York Times who, say, actually covers the science, reads the dozens of major papers that are published every year, talks to the leading climate scientists, actually visits the places around the world that are experiencing climate change, and then can explain to the public that the scientific view is the one that invariably prevails, rather than the anti-scientific one.

There’s simply too much real news and real reporting for me to cover to spend time on Revkin’s embarrassing piece, so I’d just urge you to read Levenson’s comments here and here.

History will judge that there is only one “three alarm story” — global warming science itself, the grave threat posed to humanity by unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions, a story that the NY Times seems unwilling or unable to cover accurately.  Indeed, if humanity keeps listening to the anti-scientific ideologues that Revkin listens to with undeserved credulity, then global warming will in fact be a literal million-fire-alarm story for decades to come.

Shame on the New York Times editors and reporters for not even being able to come to the same obvious conclusion as Hoyt did in his admittedly lame piece.

Link:  http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/06/clark-hoyt-new-york-times-public-editor-on-climategate/

Who you gonna call?

Comments by Pielke fils and responses:

36
Roger Pielke, Jr. says:
5 December 2009 at 4:51 PM

Hi Eric-

Again, Revkin did not ask me if it was plausible that the temperature record would shift much, he simply assumed it in the question and I assumed it in the answer. It would be a little like me asking you, assume a major volcanic eruption occurred in 2010, what would be the climate consequences?

One response might be: “hmmm that is an interesting thought experiment. What might the answer be?”

Another might be “Eric is not a vulcanologist, why ask him this? Besides the chances of a big volcanic eruption are really small.”

Your post is quite a bit like the second response.

Again, I said nothing more than you said yourself: “radical changes to the long term trend in the surface temperature record would require re-evaluation of our understanding of climate sensitivity”.

Are radical changes possible? Don’t ask me, I’m a political scientist;-) But in any case you should be heartened by my answers, which explained that even if this occurred, it does not much change the science or policy equation — from the perspective of the social construction of science — which I take it is just about where you come out asking a different question about plausibility. So it appears we are in violent agreement from very different perspectives.

[Response: The right response to your hypothetical would be, "First, let me be very clear that a major eruption in any given year is very unlikely...." and then to answer the question.

Furthermore, to repeat this once more, as clearly as I can: *What you said* was mostly wrong, *even* in response to a hypothetical "really big change." What you said about how climate sensitivity is estimated was wrong, and what you said about how estimates of climate sensivity wind up in projections of the future was wrong. And overall, what you said was grossly misleading because it strongly implies (since you did not bother to give the caveat at the beginning, analogous to the caveat about the volcano) that big changes to our estimates of climate sensitivity might well come from an actual fresh and independent look at the surface temperature records. While *technically* accurate (anything is *possible*), that is a very misleading statement. And it is very very misleading to suggest that that would translate directly into changed projections. And that supports the view that questions raised by the CRU emails cast doubt on future projections, which is very very very misleading. One more 'very' and I think it simply becomes 'dishonest'.

But, that's all water under the bridge I suppose because you now say you agree with me that if Revkin had asked a better question, such as "Is it at all likely that any of this matters to future projections?" you would have answered "No, it is not at all likely." Right?--eric]

Dear Readers,

Some of you may be wondering why I stated that Andrew Revkin of the New York Times has sold out to the fossil-fuel interests.

Some of you may not be aware of the sordid history of Patrick Michaels, but Mr. Revkin is certainly very aware of it.

Please read below:



            Pat Michaels is one of the most prolific and widely quoted climate change skeptics.  He has frequently been called "Virginia's state climatologist" although the State of Virginia recently told him to stop using that title when conducting his private consulting business.  There is some controversy as to whether or not he is a state climatologist.  Michaels was originally appointed state climatologist by the former Governor John Dalton in 1980.  However Katherine K. Hanley, the secretary of the commonwealth, said the code of Virginia "does not provide for the governor to appoint a state climatologist."   According to the Daily Progress the current Governor Timothy M. Kaine’s office says Michaels "holds an honorary position and does not speak for the state or the governor" and he "is not subject to gubernatorial appointment - or political removal from office."


        The following is one of several reasons why numerous people refer to Pat Michaels as a "fraud, and simple".  On June 23, 1988 James Hansen testified in front of congress on global warming.   Hansen said he could state "with 99% confidence" that a long-term warming trend was underway, and he strongly suspected that the greenhouse effect was to blame. He provided the following graph as part of his Congressional testimony on global warming:

Hansen's Original 1988 Graph

Hansen and Lebedeff, 1988

This graph showed 3 scenarios.  Scenario A, B, and C were based on different levels of CO2 output.  Scenario A has a fast growth rate for greenhouse gases and fossil fuel use. Scenarios B and C have a moderate growth rate for greenhouse gases.  However scenarios C's growth would peak at the year 2000.   The objective was to illustrate the broad range of possibilities of how CO2 forcings would actually develop.  It's simply too difficult to predict how much coal humans will burn.

          Fast forwarding 10 years, Hansen updated his graph with the most recent temperature measurements.  The temperature measurements are in red.  Hansen's predictions were very accurate.   The growth rate of greenhouse gases in the period 1988-1998 has been relatively linear, very similar to scenarios B and C (which are nearly the same until year 2000).1  However, when Pat Michaels testified in front of Congress he erased scenarios B and C of Hansen's graph.  Climate blogger Coby Beck claims Pat Michaels "lied by omission".  Professor Tim Lambert prefers to use stronger words "fraud, pure and simple" on his blog.  Nobody can know with absolute certainty what is going on in anyone's mind.  However, the facts are that Pat Michaels not only erased what Hansen stated would be the most likely scenario, but he had also erased the two most accurate scenarios.

Hansen's Graph Updated	Pat Michaels Portrayal of Hansen's graph.
Hansen et al, 1998	Pat Michaels testimony

[Readers, here is Hansen's graph updated with actual temperatures through 2006, compliments of Eli Rabett's blog, Rabett Run (http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/09/well-lookee-that.html)]:


The Committe on small business doesn't have online records prior to 2001.  However, Pat Michaels testimony is hosted at the CATO institute.  For an analysis of how Hansen's graph is performing using the most up to date info, please goto Professor Rabett's blog entry "Well lookee that...."or visit Logical Science's analysis.

On realclimate.org Gavin Schmidt claims Pat Michaels twists scientific evidence on his blog World Climate Report.  Pat Michaels claims uses specific areas of Southern Greenland to debunk the climate models due to the lack of warming in that specific region.  The problem is that he doesn't specify which climate model he's "debunking".  To make matters even more confusing all the climate models listed on the public database at PCMDI do not predict warming in Southern Greenland.  So one has to wonder if Pat Michaels created a fake climate model just to debunk it.  Access to the models is free and registration is merely a formality.  Feel free to analyze the models yourself and compare them to Pat Michaels's claims.
Feel free to comment at our BLOG!

More sources:

• Deltoid: Pat Michaels: "fraud, pure and simple"
• Real Climate: Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition
• Real Climate: Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition II Real Climate: Michaels misquotes Hansen
• Exxonsecrets FACTSHEET: Patrick J. Michaels
• Cato: Pat Michaels Kyoto Protocol: "A useless appendage to an irrelevant treaty"
• RabettRun: Well lookee that....
• RabettRun: Continuing our series.....
• GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
• Deltoid: Pat Michaels, at it again
• Deltoid: Singer and Michaels pronounce global warming dead
• James' Empty Blog: Yet more betting on climate with World Climate Report
• Hansen, J., M. Sato, J. Glascoe and R. Ruedy 1998a. Common sense climate index: Is climate changing noticeably? Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 95, 4113-4120.
• Hansen, J., M. Sato, A. Lacis, R. Ruedy, I. Tegen, and E. Matthews 1998b. Perspective: Climate forcings in the industrial era. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 22, 12753-12758.
• Hansen, J., and S. Lebedeff 1988. Global surface air temperatures: Update through 1987. Geophys. Res. Lett. 15, 323-326.

Link:  http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/patMichaels.html