Channel 4 in the UK produced what can only be called a true work of fiction and propaganda and peddling it as a documentary “debunking” climate change science. It’s too bad that we do not have censorship of outright lies and twisting of the truth on TV.
Here’s a couple of excellent articles explaining everything that is wrong with this “crapumentary”:
A Global Warming Swindle play-by-play
Channel 4′s Problem with Science
Forgive the au’ contrare,
On the heels of the New York Times questioning Al Gore’s global warming hype, comes an interesting tale (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003618979_warming15m.html) at the University of Washington from the Seattle Times. From all appearances, the state climatologist “fired” the assistant state climatologist for not adhering to the proverbial party line.
The lede of the story is an eye-catcher:
The number is eye-popping, and it was repeated so often it became gospel.
The snowpack in the Cascades, it was said, shrank by 50 percent in the last half-century. It’s been presented as glaring evidence of the cost exacted by global warming — the drying up of a vital water source.
That statistic has been repeated in a government report, on environmental-advocacy Web sites and in media coverage. Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently mentioned it in a guest column in The Seattle Times.
Here’s the problem: The number is dead wrong.
Not only is the number dead wrong, check out the disparity between a 50% reduction and what dissenter Mark Albright said in an email questioning the statistic :
I believe a more accurate statement would be along the lines of:
1) The average snowpack in the Cascades has increased over the past 30 years in spite of the steady upward trend in global temperature, or 2) Long term data indicates no significant trend in Cascade Mtns snowpack over the last 90 years, or 3) The snowpack (1997-2007) at Mt. Rainier Paradise has increased 11% since the 1940′s.
Those descriptors are a far cry from the 30% reduction that was finally “agreed” upon.
All of this serves as a reminder that natural global weather patterns occur in cycles lasting hundreds of years. Hyperbolic predications based on a few decades of study over a mere portion of a given trend are not great tools for extrapolating long term expectations.
Natural, long-term global warming trend? Sure, makes sense. End of the world as we know it based on leading statements and inaccurate data? No thanks.
Hi Aaron. You’re making the mistake of comparing local measurements with global data. Cascade snowpack might be increasing but if it is, that would be because of increased winter precipitation. This would in no way contradict the global warming science, which does predicty such localised phenomenons.
You want to talk about real data, go check the authority on glaciers: The World Glacier Monitoring Service, and download the data. You will see that 90% of glaciers worldwide are shrinking dramatically. You can also find plenty of pictures on the net that show how the major glaciers of this world are disapearing. These are hard facts, and easy for you to verify, if you would only take the time to check the science.
You are quite correct that climate changes in cycles. Do you realy think that the thousands of climaologists working on the problem are too stupid to know that? In fact, the natural cycles show that we should currently be in a cooling trend, not a warming one. There has also never been such a rapid warming over the last 20,000 years, some studies even say 625,000 although the data is less reliable.
It is true that it is hard to make longterm temperature predicitions, which is why scientists give us a pretty big range. But we know how much CO2 we’re putting in the atmosphere, we know how much of it stays there, we know how much it has increased, this is something we can acually measure. We also know exactly how much heat “forcing” this CO2 produces. This is really not that hard to understand. What makes it a somewhat more difficult problem is all the other forcings, positive and negative, but the science has a pretty good handle on that now, and the models are working quite well at predicting current climate basd on past data, which gives us a pretty good level of confidence in their validity.
You want to talk about scientists being fired for not towing the party line? What about all the EPA, NOAA, and NASA scientists who have been muzzled and those that have quit over it? It boggles the mind that people can think that 99.9% of the world’s scientists working on the problem for the last 40 years can be wrong, or part of a conspiracy. Or that the top science agencies of 130 countries (including the USA) can be wrong. You must be one smart cookie to know better then them. In fact it shows a complete lack of understanding of what science is about, how the scientific community works, and what makes scientists click.
On the other hand, it is not hard to understand why Exxon-Mobil and their oil friends in the White House WOULD WANT TO FIGHT THIS, and there is even a money trail that clearly demonstrates how Exxon is sponsoring several PR agencies who have created bunk science groups and websites to disseminate misinformation.
[...] decline in the Cascades. This addresses the issues brought up by one of my readers in this comment where he insinuates that this little media boondoggle casts doubts over the validity of climate [...]
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