Big Surprise: Tea Partiers Don't Believe in Global Warming

This is more unsurprising news. According to a poll by the Pew Research Center, it turns out that folks who identify themselves with the tea party are more likely to deny or question the existence of global warming, with only 25 percent of this faction of the GOP saying that global warming is a reality. That stands in stark contrast to the 67 percent of Americans (including 61 percent of Republicans) who say they believe that the world is warming.

            My guess about this is that tea party folks are twofold: First, it seems to me that many in the tea party are prone to believing fantastical unreal things. Barack Obama was born in Kenya, despite evidence to the contrary; Barack Obama is a Socialist, despite evidence to the contrary; Barack Obama is a Muslim, despite evidence to the contrary. Many in the tea party believe this stuff. Second, the folks who say they are in the tea party are more likely to get their “news” from Fox News, which has done really questionable reporting on climate change, as well as from talk radio, which can be even worse when it comes to global warming and mendacity.

            Given their disproportionate influence on the GOP, as well as the rest of our politics—remember these folks brought you the partial government shutdown—the misinformation and ignorance on the climate that the tea party embraces is even more destructive and dangerous than their partial government shutdown.

On Global Warming Australia Gets Plenty of Bad Press

Sorry to have let the blog posts drop off during October. I’ve been pretty busy working on some restoration projects (more about this in later blogs).

            Anyway, I noticed this story yesterday in the Guardian. An analysis of Australia’s press coverage of global warming reveals that one third of that nation’s news media rejects the science of climate change. This is head spinningly astounding. The Australians have always impressed me as being particularly reasonable folks. But the Guardian explains that:

A study of 602 articles in 10 newspapers found that 32% dismissed or questioned whether human activity was causing the climate to change. The articles were analyzed between February and April in 2011 and again in the same period in 2012.Significantly, newspapers based a small fraction of their coverage on peer-reviewed science, instead relying heavily on comment pieces penned by writers without a scientific background.

If there is someone or something blameworthy here, the Guardian lays it squarely with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which has increasingly treated the subject of global warming in opinion pieces rather than straightforward news coverage. The report, which was conducted by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, a non-profit organization based at the University of Technology in Sydney, said that, “By turning climate science into a debate, skepticism occupies space in Australian non-skeptic media that might otherwise be given to articles covering climate science.” Murdoch also owns Fox News in this country, which is pretty infamous for their questionable coverage of global warming.

Of course, things like this have consequences. Perhaps this had something to do with Australia’s last elections, in which the electorate voted out the Labor Party and replaced them with a two-party center-right coalition, whose leader, Tony Abbott, voiced as one of his objectives the end to Australia’s carbon tax.

Knowing this about the press coverage in Australia, the election starts to makes sense. If enough folks read in their newspapers that global warming is at best an iffy proposition, they will vote to rid themselves of a carbon tax. There is much more to the election than this one tax issue, but I’m certain that it played some part in the outcome.

The Wall Street Journal: Global Warming, What Me Worry?

What is it with the Wall Street Journal? I understand the business and financial emphasis of the newspaper; I understand that a lot of that business concerns the fossil fuel industry. So I understand that the editorial page needs to support the fossil fuel industry. But it really sent my head spinning when I read this editorial: Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change. While celebrating the finding in the soon to be released IPCC report that anticipates a lower rate of global warming than what previous reports found, the author contends that a moderate increase in global temperatures would be a good thing.

            While it seems that northern countries like Russia could capitalize on warmer and longer summers to grow more food, for the most part most of what I read about global warming is pretty nasty. We are just beginning to get the enormity of the ecological ramifications of climate change. Most of the experts in this area try to be conservative in their estimates, but they are nonetheless predicting substantial ecological damage, such as greatly accelerated pace of extinctions.[i] A lot of folks are talking about such drastic measures as assisted migrations.[ii]

            The world is starting to experience the wanderings of climate refugees. And that says nothing of the instability, suffering, and warfare that will happen because of a warmer world and rising seas. Maybe the author should have read the Christian Science Monitor and this article on the possible link between global warming and the war in Syria.

            If this editorial wasn’t enough, the Journal also published this opinion piece in which a number of scientists say that climate change is nothing to worry over.

            Extinctions? Droughts? Refugees? Warfare? Nothing to worry over?

            Does anybody take the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal seriously?

---

[i] GREGORY SHUFELDT, et al. "Expert Opinion On Climate Change And Threats To Biodiversity." Bioscience 63.8 (2013): 666-673. Environment Complete. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.

[ii] C. Ste-Marie, et al. "Why We Disagree About Assisted Migration: Ethical Implications Of A Key Debate Regarding The Future Of Canada's Forests." Forestry Chronicle 87.6 (2011): 755-765. Environment Complete. Web. 14 Sept. 2013.

The San Diego UT Profiles Scientist Ralph Keeling, But Where Is the Science?

I am left feeling that there is something a bit remiss in this story from San Diego’s UT newspaper. The story concerns the work of Ralph Keeling, who is carrying on the work of his father, the late Charles Keeling. The elder Keeling established the measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide atop Mona Loa in Hawaii back in the 1950s. The continued observations of increasing carbon dioxide are what is known as the Keeling Curve and serve as some of the bedrock research upon which the science of global warming is based.

            As to the science of global warming, Deborah Sullivan Brennan, the writer of the story, gives us the following:

Most, but not all, scientists believe global warming is accelerating and that human activity plays a key role.

Although the curve shows a consistent upward trend, its implications for climate are the topics of ongoing debate. Uncertainties remain about carbon dioxide’s effects on weather, precipitation and other facets of climate.

Maybe I’m being too critical here, but it seems to me that Brennan is placing an emphasis on the uncertainties of global warming. “Most, but not all, scientists believe global warming is accelerating,” just strikes me as a needless way of emphasizing the beliefs of a few contrarians—many of them on the payroll of fossil fuel industries or their allied “think tanks”—who buck the scientific consensus of global warming. Nowhere in the article does Brennan mention that the world’s temperatures have risen in correspondence to the rise in CO2 that the Keeling Curve reveals. Neither is there any mention that it is the burning of fossil fuels that throws CO2 up in the air.

            Most of the article is a very pleasant profile of Ralph Keeling and his relationship with his father, describing their shared interests in music and tinkering. If that is the emphasis of the article, fine. This is from today’s paper, the Sunday paper, which usually features a lot of human interest features. I don’t object to that. But if you’re going to profile a son who is carrying on the scientific work of his father, please, in the two or three paragraphs that describe the research that they share, get the science right.

            And as far as I’m concerned the reporter buried the lead of the story. The money quote at the very end of the profile has Ralph Keeling saying: “Rising carbon dioxide is not a threat to life. No one ever claimed that. It’s just a threat to life as we know it.”

            But then again it wouldn’t have been a very good human interest Sunday paper story if the headline read: Prominent Scientist Says Global Warming Ends Life As We Know It.

Global Warming Has Slowed: Is This Good News?

This falls under the “This is not good news, but at least it’s not really bad news” category. Some of the latest research finds that global warming has slowed in the last ten years or so. Apparently the ever increasing temperatures of the nineties have leveled off, at least for a while. No one knows the cause of this slow down. The sun’s activity may have changed, or a lot of that heat may have gone into the ocean. It could very well be a combination of factors.

            This seems to be giving us a bit more breathing room to mitigate carbon emissions and make adaptations to warmer weather and higher sea levels. On the other hand, this leveling off could be temporary, and warming could resume to that rate that we experienced in the nineties. Or, in a worse case scenario, the earth could experience a “rubber band” effect, in which the present period of relatively slow warming gives way to accelerated warming as the atmosphere catches up to what has been predicted.

             The link where I found this news is from Scientific American, a publication that understands that science is complex and often comes to conclusions and observations that cannot fit into a simplistic model. It will be interesting to see how this discovery might play out in the popular press and the “think tanks” that do the PR work for energy companies and big business. I imagine that the narratives that these folks will give to this scientific work may vary from “Scientists Find That Global Warming Has Stopped” to “Climate Scientists Still Confused As Ever.”

            And that could be considered part of the “Bad News” of this story.

OK, Temperatures are rising more slowly. It's still hard to argue with the science. graph from NOAA

From New York to Newtok, Global Warming Affects the U.S. But You Wouldn't Know It From the U.S. Press

The Headline in the Tehran Times spells it out, “Alaska town will likely end up swallowed by the Bearing Sea in 2017.” The story ran about a week ago and describes the plight of Newtok, a small coastal town, due to sea level rise. The story also appeared in the Guardian and is part of a series that the British newspaper is publishing on Newtok and other coastal towns in Alaska that are threatened by climate driven sea level rise.

            Besides The Tehran Times and The Guardian, I found the story in a few Alaska newspapers, but otherwise the story of this town and the assault it is receiving from an ever-rising sea did not appear in any other major news outlet, even news outlets of the U.S.

            OK, news editors may have passed on this story because there are fewer that 500 residents in Newtok, and the town is, despite being in the United States, pretty far away from most Americans. Sitting on the Bearing Sea, it is way closer to Russia than it is to any other state of the union. Even still, Tehran and London, which are way, way far away from Newtok, chose to run this story about America’s first climate refugees. And despite the small number of people affected by sea level rise in Newtok, it is a significant story. These are the very first Americans to be affected by global sea level rise. Besides the human interest of their situation, the story of their town is a harbinger for Seattle, San Diego, and any other city that will be affected by the rising oceans.

            In more than one way, New York City is a world away from Newtok. The city of skyscrapers nonetheless shares in the effects of climate change with the small village. According to this story in the Guardian, in the next ten years New York will experience a 22 percent rise in heat related deaths due to global warming. This is a story of people dying in America’s largest city due to climate change, and, so far, no American paper has this story, even the New York Times.

             I understand that the press is hyperventilating over stories such as Benghazi, the IRS scrutiny of tea party organizations, and I would be loath to suggest that there is any type of conspiracy among the press and big business to keep the coverage of global warming to a minimum. But these climate change stories are significant, and it is disquieting to think that I can be better informed about the effects of global warming on Alaska and New York by looking to London and Tehran.