Need help debunking a skeptic article

[LouisvilleDem]

A conservative co-worker sent me this article. I've been trying to debunk some of its claims but I'm coming up empty. Anyone spot anything in here that seems off?

<snip>

2013 has been a gloomy year for global warming enthusiasts. The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began. In the Arctic the news is also glum. Five years ago, Al Gore predicted that by 2013 “the entire North polar ice cap will be gone.” Didn’t happen. Instead, a deflated Gore saw the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction. And that of 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Weather between the poles has also conspired to make the global warming believers look bad. In December, U.S. weather stations reported over 2000 record cold and snow days. Almost 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, twice as much as last year. The heavens even opened up in the Holy Land, where an awestruck citizenry saw 16 inches of snow fall in Jerusalem, almost three feet in its environs. Snow blanketed Cairo for the first time in more than 100 years.

2013 marks the 17th year of no warming on the planet. It marks the first time that James Hansen, Al Gore’s guru and the one whose predictions set off the global warming scare, admitted that warming had stopped. It marks the first time that major media enforcers of the orthodoxy — the Economist, Reuters and the London Telegraph – admitted that the science was not settled on global warming, the Economist even mocking the scientists’ models by putting them on “negative watch.” Scientific predictions of global cooling – until recently mostly shunned in the academic press for fear of being labeled crackpot – were published and publicized by no less than the BBC, a broadcaster previously unmatched in the anthropogenic apocalyptic media.

</snip>

http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/12/19/lawrence-solomon-for-global-warming-believers-2013-was-the-year-from-hell/

[arcane1]

1. Why do you have to debunk an opinion piece that contains no references to back up its claims?

The burden of proof is on the claimer.

[LouisvilleDem]

2. True

I'll ask him for some proof.

[Curmudgeoness]

3. This would take a dissertation to debunk.

There is so much crammed into this opinion piece, and checking every line will take a lot of time. First, let's deal with the term "global warming" that is misleading. That is why scientists are using the term "climate change" to describe what we are dealing with. Because of changes brought on by a heating of the earth, there are some areas that may get cold than they have experienced in the past, while others may get warmer. It is not as simple as we will all see warmer weather. But there will be more instances of more violent weather.

To show just how hard it will be to debunk this, I will focus on just that first statement about Antarctic sea ice. I found this:

Here are some of the leading hypotheses currently being explored through a combination of satellite remote sensing, fieldwork in Antarctica and numerical model simulations – to help explain the increasing trend in overall Antarctic sea ice coverage:
•Increased westerly winds around the Southern Ocean, linked to changes in the large-scale atmospheric circulation related to ozone depletion, will see greater northward movement of sea ice, and hence extent, of Antarctic sea ice.
•Increased precipitation, in the form of either rain or snow, will increase the density stratification between the upper and middle layers of the Southern Ocean. This might reduce the oceanic heat transfer from relatively warm waters at below the surface layer, and therefore enhancing conditions at the surface for sea ice.
•Similarly, a freshening of the surface layers from this precipitation would also increase the local freezing point of sea ice formation.
•Another potential source of cooling and freshening in the upper ocean around Antarctica is increased melting of Antarctic continental ice, through ocean/ice shelf interaction and iceberg decay.
•The observed changes in sea ice extent could be influenced by a combination of all these factors and still fall within the bounds of natural variability.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-10-antarctic-sea-ice.html#jCp

Things are not as simple as they appear in one line. You will never be able to debunk all of this and have your right wing friend even bother to read it.

[arcane1]

5. It's the shotgun approach: make as many claims as possible, and demand every phrase be debunked.

Then put the burden on the person doing the debunking. Since so many phrases have been claimed, the debunker looks like a nitpicker.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. That is what they always do.

And I have learned not to bother responding to them anymore, because they will not read all the information presented. They like it all tied up with a nice bow in a few paragraphs of absolutes.

[arcane1]

14. Exactly. If the claim is offered with no proof, why should I do the work of disproving it?

In this case, it's an "opinion"piece from a "financial" website, that takes the side which offers the biggest short-term monetary gain. If it can't be bothered to back up its claims, then it's not worth debunking. Their sound-bites and pithy insults are all they have!

[AleksS]

4. This article should help

Last edited Sun Dec 22, 2013, 11:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Unfortunately, the fact that the total oceanic surface area covered by ice was greater this year than last (as of August) is being parroted by the same group that always shouts: "See global warming is a hoax!" every time it snows outside. And for similar reasons. Their failure to consider long-term trends over short term phenomena is one reason why these folks will be denying global warming even as their homes are being submerged by rising sea levels.

This article gives some good information and reflection on the data your writer is referencing and also includes some pretty great animations that very very very clearly demonstrate your writer's massive (dare I say 'epic?') failure.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/09/climate-change-arctic-sea-ice-delusions

The article includes solid refutations of both the "global cooling" nonsense and the ice coverage arguments your writer puts forth. (Notably the authors of the UW research that brought up the idea of global cooling expressly stated that they were speaking in the immediate short term and their research has "very little" to do with global warming on a long term scale, which they note is continuing.)

In any event while of course your RW friend will never read it, it should provide you the evidence you need to rest assured that what he wrote is in fact bull-puckey, and not worth the bandwidth it took to send.

Just as a for example, these are a couple images from the article I linked that I find interesting. (The article includes captions with sources, etc.) There are other similar images that graphically demonstrate the disconnect between a scientist's view of AGW vs. that of a "skeptic."
[img][/img]
[img][/img]

[arcane1]

6. Indeed. It was cold recently and everyone on Facebook was calling Al Gore an asshole.

Now, it's unusually warm, and those very same people are talking about the pleasant Christmas weather they are going to enjoy, without a word about climate change.

[JEFF9K]

7. "Global warming enthusiasts" are upset by global warming. ...

... If most scientists agree with the new information, "global warming enthusiasts" will be happy that global warming has been proven false.

Liberals don't cling to ideas that have been proven wrong, like conservatives do. (See trickle-down economics.)

[caraher]

8. Do you enjoy playing whack-a-mole?

The trouble with debunking every piece that comes along is that even the effort gives the lies more cognitive salience than they deserve, and it's far to easy to generate new BS that track down real science to refute it.

If you must, there are some good catalogs of "skeptic" debunkings. Skeptical Science and Real Climate are always good places to start. It's also worth knowing that Solomon has no known qualifications to make pronouncements on climate science beyond his ability to induce people to pay him to do things like promote coal:

"Coal used to be a very dirty fuel but coal has become cleaner and cleaner over the decades. Clean coal now is quite clean. Clean coal now has the same emissions profile as natural gas. Clean coal can become cleaner still. We can take even more of the pollutants out of coal and I believe we should. Clean coal, I think, is the immediate answer to Canada’s energy needs and the world’s energy needs. There are hundreds of years available of coal supplies. We shouldn’t be squandering that resource. We should be using it prudently."

A few "greatest hits" from the piece in question:

Antarctic sea ice: "Satellites measure Antarctica is gaining sea ice but losing land ice at an accelerating rate which has implications for sea level rise."

Arctic ice: Claim seems to be about cherry-picked data

The random selection of factoids about snow and cold here and there amount to nothing evidence-wise.

"2013 marks the 17th year of no warming on the planet:" Another cherry-pick

"Scientific predictions of global cooling – until recently mostly shunned in the academic press for fear of being labeled crackpot – were published and publicized by no less than the BBC" Ah yes, the famous peer-reviewed scientific journal "BBC." 'Nuff said.

The rest of the piece is cheering against solar power, for coal, and celebrating the last dying gasps of the Kyoto protocol. Really, this isn't even a particularly good "skeptic" piece...

[Curmudgeoness]

10. The famous peer-reviewed scientific journal "BBC".

Good one. I needed a laugh about now.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. Here is an easy to understand place to start

debunking the whole piece you posted:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/17/global-warming-not-stalled-climate

Prof. James Hansen warns public not to be fooled by "diversionary tactic" from deniers.

If this one item is completely false, there is no way to trust any other part of the opinion piece.

[bananas]

12. "Some models suggest...75 percent chance...during some of the summer months"

Here's a video of Al Gore in 2009:

ForaTv
Uploaded on Dec 16, 2009

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/12/14/COP15_Gore_and_Store_Report_on_Arctics_Melting_Ice

Former Vice President Al Gore references computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose virtually all of its ice within the next seven years. "Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years," says Gore.

FORA.tv's complete coverage of the COP15 Climate Change Conference: http://fora.tv/partner/COP15

<snip>

It can be awkward to repeat all those qualifiers each time you give a talk, and that's true of any subject, what most people do is be specific once or twice, the rest of the time they will say "ice free in five years" because the audience understands all the qualifiers don't have to be repeated, they've been given the context, they don't need to hear all the qualifiers each and every time. Then if someone takes a video clip out of context it will seem wrong because it's taken out of context.

[Iterate]

13. Or...send them the entire IPCC V report

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fifth report is about 160mb, 2200 pages long. But that's just the Group 1 report.

Tell them to get back to you when they've finished it. Not likely they would read it, but it might convey part of what overwhelming evidence means -and how little they know.

[rickford66]

15. volume = area X thickness

"The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began."

I believe I've read that the thickness is much less every year, but I don't have a link.

[truedelphi]

16. Oneof the big problems in debunking this is

that the root statement could be correct.

Since in the summer the weather is getting much warmer, but then in the winter, it is getting seriously colder, the two cancel each other out. (For instance, here in Lake County Calif., extreme cold of more than 5 degrees a day is averaged out by the 5 degree higher daily temps in the summer.)

So you need to bring the argument back to the basics: that there are record heavy duty weather catastrophes occurring, in terms of drought, in terms of record cold weather in winter, and record warm weather in the summer.

The weather is simply much more problematic than at any other point in modern history. Even tornadoes are behaving differently. We recently had a November weekend in which some 26 tornadoes hit the Mid West. I defy anyone to show me any weekend in November in the 1960's or 1970's or 1980's when this happened! And that weekend, the Chicago land area had a whole slew of those funnels hitting the area. It used to be that Chicago tornadoes didn't happen but once every five years! And never in November.

[Faryn Balyncd]

17. "Global warming enthusiast" is a figment of Solomon's imagination.

Being a realist does not equate to being an enthusiast.