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Media’s Deep Freeze in Headline Accuracy II — Foments Further Anti Science Info Passed of as “News”

Sunday, March 7th, 2010
March 7, 2010

The New York times might well be America’s Leading Newspaper. Yet last month, The Times ran an otherwise passable piece on climate change that had a sensationalistic and highly misleading headline about the “deep freeze” we were ostensibly in, and that played into the false balance idea that scientific analyses over climate patterns and mocking anti science skepticism are almost two sides to a reasonable “discussion.”

Such skepticism — a healthy attribute in science in general — is on the issue of climate change routinely based upon ideological belief and yet offered up as ostensible “science.”

Precipitation is not temperature.  (Moreover, in 2009 the U.S. Global Change Research Program predicted the possibility of increased precipitation in the Eastern U.S. as part of the climate change phenomenon.)

And one region over a short term period relative to long term global trends, given inherent weather variability, is about as relevant as what the temperature is at 3:00 p.m. v. 2:35 p.m. on a mid October day in terms of determining if we are moving into winter or summer.

Yet sites that veer into anti science –or simply exhibit great misunderstanding of the subject matter — continue to play upon common misperceptions on the basic science and argue that unusually large snowstorms mean that the phenomenon of climate change is less likely.

As other sites have pointed out, here for example is the far right wing site Newsbusters on the recent Washington, D.C. snowstorm:

With Washington, D.C. buried beneath at least 20 inches of snow, and with more in the forecast, common sense would suggest global warming alarmists look elsewhere to make the argument to raise awareness for their concerns.

But no, Dylan Ratigan thinks it’s ridiculous to suggest all the snowfall totals could cast doubt on the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Such sound bites as these are easy to assert yet reflect an almost complete misunderstanding of the subject matter, and tend to greatly further misinformation on the subject matter.

As a further example of how this process of misinformation takes place, and just how prevalent it is, consider what happened when the very next day after the misleading NY Times article appeared, Britain’s leading Newspaper ran the following highly misleading headline:

Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels.

This headline implies that the claim of sea level rise was being withdrawn. In fact, what was being withdrawn was a very specific paper on the conservative end of such claims.

The real problems with such headlines is that they are then often mistakenly used by “climate change” skepticism sites and so called experts, most of whom are actually expert at passing off erroneous and misleading information as logical and scientifically based, and adding to the level of confusion, misunderstanding, and false assertions on the topic.

The Wonk Room at the liberal leaning site Think Progress, with little partisan spin, does an excellent job of powerfully illustrating how this climate headline and paper retraction report was in turn, and immediately, used by numerous ideological sites to further misinformation on the subject of climate change.

If all one read was the introduction, a reader might get the false impression that sea level rise from global warming is in doubt. The misleading Guardian headline was picked up — as per usual — by the Drudge Report and Marc Morano’s conspiracy site Climate Depot. Right-wing bloggers, unsurprisingly, latched on to the headline without any comprehension of the story:

Betsy Newmark: Another global warming claim that has had to be retracted because of problems with the data.

Sammy Benoit: OOPS Never-mind! Climate scientists withdraw IPCC-related article claiming sea is rising.

JammieWearingFool: Another global warming myth comes crashing down. No warming since at least 1995, no melting glaciers and now no rising sea levels.

Jules Crittenden: Warmal scientists are compelled to admit (again) that they don’t know what they’re talking about, retract study that predicted up to a nearly three-foot sea level rise by 2100.

Law professor William A. Jacobson: But now the seas are not going to rise? My dream of a waterfront home is melting away faster than the glaciers.

Caleb Howe: Yet another card removed from the geodesic dome of cards that is AGW hysteria.

Joe Romm from Climate Progress — a much heralded site which has its ups and downs but which is generally very informative and painstakingly researched — aptly, if generously, summarizes the phenonemon here:

Another dreadful media headline, another round of anti-science confusion.

Some of it may be confusion.  But some of it also clearly appears to be ideological blindness and or desire driving the multiple analyses and efforts to seek out belief reinforcing mistakes.

The Guardian article itself notes in the very first sentence:

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the finding

But the article then goes on to note in the very next few paragraphs that the paper that was retracted was used to support the IPCC estimates for sea level rise — estimates that as the paper also notes, many scientists have criticized as far too conservative.

As the Wonk Room further notes:

However, the retraction instead admits that the paper’s calculations for an upper bound to future sea level rise were incorrect, and sea level rise could be much worse. [The] study used paleoclimate reconstructions to predict that sea level rise from global warming would be constrained to between 7 cm and 82 cm (3 to 32 in) by the end of the century, in line with the estimated sea level rise in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which excluded possible effects from ice sheets.

…The best scientific estimates of future sea level rise continue to worsen, as it becomes evident that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass much more rapidly than estimated before 2007. December’s “Global sea level linked to global temperature,” published…in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences projects a catastrophic rise of 0.75 to 1.9 m (2.5 to 6 feet) by 2100:

In other words, estimates of sea level rise were based upon numerous studies and projections, not upon this one study, which was notable only in that it tended to support the earlier IPCC sea level estimates, which had been criticized for having been too low.   The retraction of this report only further supported critiques of the IPCC estimates as too low; quite the opposite of what the seeming anti climate science crowd crowed about –believing, or falsely implying, that it undermined the idea of and support for projected sea level rises.

The retracted study appeared in the Journal Nature GeoScience in July of 2009. In a post written seven months earlier, in December, 2008, entitled US Geological Survey stunner: Sea-level rise in 2100 will likely “substantially exceed” IPCC projections, Romm notes:

A major new report warns that on our current emissions path, we face the severe risk of abrupt climate change impacts. The basic conclusions themselves are nothing new — see “Startling new sea level rise research: “Most likely” 0.8 to 2.0 meters by 2100” and “Australia faces the “permanent dry” — as do we.”

But what is stunning is that these warnings come from the United States Geological Survey —the Bush Administration (!). This new science-based report, Abrupt Climate Change, is thus a sobering book-end to the fantasy-based talking points released by the Administration today on how the President has “Taken Constructive Steps To Confront Climate Change.”

This is a first-rate report from the USGS’s Climate Change Science Program. I highly recommend reading, Chapter 2, “Rapid Changes in Glaciers and Ice Sheets and their Impacts on Sea Level,” and Chapter 3, “Hydrological Variability and Change.” The chapters are much more readable than the IPCC reports, and the two together will make anyone an expert on what are perhaps the two most dangerous climate impacts that threaten this country.

The sea level rise conclusion, “based on an assessment of the published scientific literature” is:

Recent rapid changes at the edges of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show acceleration of flow and thinning, with the velocity of some glaciers increasing more than twofold. Glacier accelerations causing this imbalance have been related to enhanced surface meltwater production penetrating to the bed to lubricate glacier motion, and to ice-shelf removal, ice-front retreat, and glacier ungrounding that reduce resistance to flow. The present generation of models does not capture these processes. It is unclear whether this imbalance is a short-term natural adjustment or a response to recent climate change, but processes causing accelerations are enabled by warming, so these adjustments will very likely become more frequent in a warmer climate.

For the record, our prediction is that narrow range estimates are valuable in so far as predicting expected general direction, but of very limited worth as exercises in precision. The guestimation here is that save for noting the fact that sea levels are likely to rise. Assuming a slow to moderate anthropomorphic response to the challenge, sea levels will rise between 3 to 20 feet over the next 100 years, and more likely, between 6 and 18 feet. This does not mean it can’t rise more (or less, although less than this is very unlikely). And this takes into broader account more of the uncertainties inherent in speculating such a complex, futuristic phenomenon, as well as some of the potential feedback effects from increasingly decreasing surface albedo, increasingly energy (and carbon dioxide) absorbing ocean systems, and potential increases in both wildfires and terrestrial permafrost melting, among other phenomena.) But the eventual 100 year results could still very reasonably be outside of even these much broader ranges.  (Although, barring a complete reversal of ocean patterns that shut off the flow sub tropical warm waters northward along with other factors, results outside of the lower end seem exceedingly unlikely.)

Note that said “slow to moderate” response will be almost inconsequential to the problem. This will likely lead at some point in the future, well after the causes of these changes will have implemented, to potentially radical responses when anti science furor and complacency switches over to panic. It is hard to predict just when such a similarly unproductive shift will occur, as climate is a slow acting phenomenon as well as a long term trend with excessive shorter term variability which tends to mask our ability to accurately assess precisely what is going on, from shorter term data. Further complicating the picture here is the fact that potential masking inherent variability aside, there is an enormous lag time (several decades if not more) between cause and effect regarding the full impact of climate change, so that if we constrain ourselves to acting upon what is thus observable and provable, we will always be many decades behind the curve: In other words, acting to remedy a created problem that will have been greatly exacerbated via anthropogenic forcing input not yet reflected by then current observations.

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Media’s Deep Freeze in Headline Accuracy

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
March 03, 2010

Apparently  sensational headlines trump accuracy, for the gray lady now too.  NY Times Headline, February 10, 2010:

Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze

What deep freeze? Times Reporter John Broder writes:

As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments.

Oh.  That Deep freeze.  The one where temperatures (but for possibly a few days) were, essentially, within normal ranges.  And where, a bit to the West and north in Vancouver where the winter Olympics were being held, the record for the warmest monthly January average was broken by a full 1.6 degrees, and was a whopping full 7 degrees above the historic average January Temperature for the area.

As the Washington Post reported in February:

Before the massive snow-hauling began last week, the freestyle skiing course that will feature gold medal competition in moguls on Saturday sported little more than grass and mud, giving a double meaning to Vancouver’s environmentally conscious effort to put on the greenest Games in history.

As Joe Romm of Climate Progress points out, January temperatures across the continental U.S. were mildly above average. And the year that had just ended,was tied, according to NASA, for the second warmest year on record.

To get a sense of just how irrelevant and variable shorter term data is, and as a random example of potentially how variable it seems to be becoming, consider that temperatures in the U.S. in December, 2009, were 3.2 degrees colder than the long term average, whereas the month earlier, November, they were a whopping four degrees warmer than the 20th century average.   These are not daily temperatures, but the monthly average, for the entire contiguous United States, and represent wildly fluctuating patterns.

As for February, complete temperature data has not yet been compiled; but preliminary data indicates that February was not radically different, temperature wise, from January.

What February did see is a lot of precipitation, which if the temperature is around or below 32 degrees, will usually fall as snow. Temperature data is what it is — whether we have snow or rain is irrelevant to ascertaining whether it is “hot” or “cold” since we have thermometers.  So what matters as to whether we are in a “deep freeze” or not is temperatures,which again were wildly warm for November, unusually cold for December, a bit warmer than average for January, and somewhat normal for February. (Although if the Times headline was referring, more relevantly, to global patterns, we are in the midst not of a deep freeze, but an extremely warm winter.)

Periods of increased precipitation are also fully consistent with the phenomenon commonly referred to as “climate change;” as one of the underlying expectations for decades has been for a potential increase in unpredictable, volatile, and variable weather patterns. The United States Global Change Research Program, for whatever is it worth, constitutes the official U.S. word on climate change. In its detailed U.S. Climate Impacts report last year (as Broder, in his article, does finally get around to pointing out near the bottom), increased rain and snow, whether correctly or incorrectly, was predicted for the Northeastern United States. Heavy snow fall in the mid to northern Eastern Regions of the United States, amidst a broader period of both above average — as well has highly variable and unpredictable temperatures, is not even remotely inconsistent with any reasonably scientific assessment given on climate change, and if anything only serves as further, if statistically of limited value, evidence of precisely these types of increasing trends.

Yet anti science types — whether driven by misunderstanding, ideological zealotry, or both — jumped all over the snow as a chance to mock climate change, as Broder’s article went to great lengths to point out.

What Broder’s article did not go to great lengths to point out is how wildly misinformed as well as scientifically specious this is. Instead, several times in the article, he plays into elementary school remedial science class nonsense as if it were part of some legitimate debate; as for example, among other instances, when he writes:

As the first blizzard howled last weekend, the Virginia Republican Party put up an advertisement on the Web — titled “12 Inches of Global Warming” — criticizing two Virginia Democrats, Representatives Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello, who voted for the federal cap-and-trade legislation last year. The advertisement urges voters to call Mr. Boucher and Mr. Perriello to ask if they will help with the shoveling.

To be fair, Broder does slightly shift into offering up some explanation of some of these things, under the guise of “scientist say;” and the article, wildly misleading and sensational headline aside, is ultimately mildly informative.  But it also plays into the seeming reasonableness of the debate, instead of serving to illuminate the abject misinformation and wild misunderstanding (or, again, speciousness) which it is reflective of — and which is the far more relevant story here.  And in such, does very little to serve to correct it, rather than simply serve as a stenographic parrot for it all.

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NY Times Plays Fake Balance Game, but Pales in Comparison to the Crack Science Team at the Washington Post Editorial Pages

Monday, January 25th, 2010

According to NASA, 2009 was the 2d warmest year on record, tied with a few other years, including 1998.

2005 was the warmest year on record

All of the top eleven warmest years on record have occurred since the beginning of 1998.

Not according to long time Washington Post syndicated columnist George Will, who makes up his own facts,  and comes up with some fairly twisted logic — perhaps for these reasons expressed here — and the Post calls it “debate.”  But then, to the Post, this is “debate” also. But not this.

The NY Times notes that:

A separate preliminary analysis from the National Climatic Data Center, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found that 2009 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record, based on measurements taken on land and at sea.

The Times elects to also add:

The new temperature figures provide evidence in the scientific discussion of global warming but are not likely to be the last word on whether the planet’s temperature is on a consistent upward path.

The interesting thing is this use of the word “consistent.”   What does that mean? Climate change means expected increases in temperatures, and increasing variability. More importantly, the relevance of several years in terms of climate shifts are about as meaningful as measuring the weather shifts between a Monday and a Thursday during any random week, in ascertaining whether we are heading toward winter, or summer.

The Times goes much further to show how “balanced” it is, however. To it’s article on 2009 temperatures, it adds:

The question of whether the planet is heating and how quickly was at the heart of the so-called “climategate” controversy that arose last fall when hundreds of e-mail messages from the climate study unit at the University of East Anglia in England were released without authorization.

Critics seized on the messages as evidence that, in their view, climate scientists were manipulating data and colluding to keep contrary opinion out of scientific journals. But climate scientists and political leaders affirmed what they called a broad-based consensus that the planet was growing warmer, and on a consistent basis, although with measurable year-to-year variations.

Does one see anywhere in this article how there is a several decade lag between an atmospheric heat re radiation forcing (what increased greenhouse gas concentrations, by trapping more heat, result in) and actual effects?  Does one see anywhere in the article how effects that result from any increased concentrations are not likely to be linear, but accelerating, or, more importantly,the reasons why?  [See endnote [i] to this, or middle section, here.] Does one see that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are significantly above any level that we have been able to measure — through ice core sampling — over the past three quarters of a million years (while levels of methane, the next most significant greenhouse gas, have skyrocketed above even the highest levels of the past three quarters of a million years)? Or that the atmospheric concentrations of these gases is rising at what, from a geologic perpsective, is almost instantaneous speed?

No.  But one does see how this is “not likely to be the last word” on whether the climate is in fact warming, even though, what one does not see, is that the reasons for this broad based scientific consensus, are pretty basic. [See here.] Or the actual ideological rather than scientific reasons behind why this is not likely to be the “last word” on climate change itself,  rather than the more sensible question,as to what to do about it.

And one of course sees what a big deal “climate gate” was.  One does not see this NASA chart, which has now gone up even more. Nor does one see that the levels of increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations will likely not result in a one to one correlation with actual effects — consistent with nearly everything else in nature and science. Nor does one see that much of the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations has occurred over the past several decades, causing compounded effects (on top of earlier,already anthropogenic increased levels) that we will see well after their cause has been instituted, not contemporaneously with.

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