Settle in for a Sunday Junk Science take-down!
In this opinion piece, Milloy’s opinion gets an F in accuracy, but it's an absolute master-class in denialist propaganda. He employs the classic tactic of discrediting experts with what seem to be reasonable, obvious statements. They’re superficial and easy to discredit, but the point is to hijack the narrative.
He first tries to lay blame with the media's use of Climate Reanalyzer, a tool developed by my colleagues here at UMaine, claiming it exaggerates temperature anomalies (aka, warmer or colder than average) relative to a different website, temperature [dot] global.
Temperature [dot] global has little info about data sources or methods, and the "About" lists no names or orgs.
They say their averages are calculated from a "30-year mean," but it's not provided. The only time interval mentioned is on in the one graph provided: Jan 2015-Jun 2023.
In contrast, Climate Reanalyzer (which has extensive information about the data sources and methods) reports anomalies are from a 1979–2000 average for the 2 m temperature anomalies, because that predates the significant warming in the Arctic. This is important, because...
If you just compare current temperatures to the last few years (e.g., since 2015, as his website does), of COURSE you'll have smaller anomalies than if you calculate them against a normal from a cooler past. Congratulations! You've discovered global warming!
Milloy argues that Climate Reanalyzer's results are skewed because it shows more warming in the Arctic, but his website is actually designed to erase that signal. It's like saying winter doesn't exist because yesterday was hot, too.
The second thing he says is that we can't compare temperatures 125,000 years ago to today, because we didn't have satellites then. As I always say, if something seems super obvious, you're likely not the first person to think about it, but wow, denial propagandists love this one.
The armchair climate disinformation brigade cites these data all the time ("it's been warmer before!") so it's fun to see this pop up in a new context ("we have no idea how much, though!").
Here's the thing: we actually have lots of information about Earth's past climates!
We don't have direct measurements. Instead, we have what are called "proxies," bits of preserved forensic evidence in nature that record aspects of Earth's climate. These tools have been highly vetted with decades of study, which is easy to do, because they still exist today.
Proxies include things like air bubbles in ice cores that captured past atmospheres, or the head capsules of tiny aquatic insect larvae that prefer different water temperatures, or tree rings, corals, or chemicals made by leaves that preserve in mud after the leaves break down.
Once vetted, these proxies ("proxy" because they stand in for the thing we are trying to understand, like temperature) provide records across the globe.
These records were even used to test early climate models, to see if they could recreate the climate changes of the past.
So we actually have two types of evidence about past climates: multiple lines of forensic evidence from environmental proxies in the recent fossil record (land, ice, freshwater, and oceans), and highly sophisticated climate models that were trained and vetted for accuracy.
So maybe-- just maybe -- Milloy's apparent confusion* about what's going on with past, present, and future climates has more to do with who pays his salary: corporations and groups funded by the Koch brothers and dark money.
*He has a natural sciences BA. He actually does know better.
If you want to see my thread on extreme heat (and some NASA GISS last interglacial simulation output) before this wsj weighed in.
I read this #WaPo article about HOW HOT July 4 was. 100% #Hottest Day in the last 150 years. (!!!!!) https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/05/hottest-day-ever-recorded/ But WAS this the hottest day in 125,000 years? Climate Scientists are a contentious bunch & I actually did that simulation at #NASA GISS so hold my beverage while I check. Its tough comparing the heat (cold/rain/etc.) of a single day against a time period where you don't have that kind of time resolution let alone spatial coverage #paleoclimate observations 1/6
@JacquelynGill US lawyers like Milloy (and me) are trained to “distinguish” or manipulate past precedent rather than *follow* it—honestly, as the tobacco lawyers proved for years, the same goes for factual evidence (and esp anything statistical—US law is still biased towards very fallible first-hand human witnesses).
So, sadly, I’d have to say what Milloy does here fits into a dark & deep tradition of US lawyering.
@rpardee @krisnelson @JacquelynGill
no, not really
you try to get citations and press coverage so you get grants and then you might do some research but maybe you'll just macchiarini or raoult your way forward and make some monies instead
or ride some technical train and then reinvent race biology like some nobelist
@JacquelynGill Yarrow taught me that!
Thanks for this thread, really nice job hammering pseudoscience and denialism but why does THIS author do it? You speculated that they failed at education which is possible but is this joker getting paid? Are they Rapture-Ready? Do they believe so strongly in humans abilities that they mean to profit short term and assume that others will solve the problem?
I find these folks fascinating and opaque!
@JacquelynGill money sucks but sociopathy apparently sucks worse.
Ps looking out at foggy Casco Bay and hoping my kids don't get bitten by sharks today!
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