This week's Climate Denial Crock investigates the so called "1500 Year Warming cycle",
and the author's of the book that made it a Denier staple.
This event is based on ice core data from Greenland, showing a warming spike that
occurs every 1470 years or so. The warm spike is not a global event, rather, it is evidence
of an anomaly in heat flow between the northern and southern hemisphere.
S. Fred Singer, and Dennis Avery, are cogs in a disinformation machine that
has cost the world 20 years of precious time in dealing with the issue.
This week's CDCW examines their ideas, as well as their ideological motivations.
transcript:
I give a lot of presentations on climate change, and since I live in a fairly conservative area, I'm always dealing with predictable questions and challenges from the audience, One that I've come to expect often starts out like this...
clip---I have read a book----
Or, more often, they talked to somebody who knows somebody who's read a book.
And, as often as not, the book that somebody read is "Unstoppable Global Warming, every 1500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.
So, it's become a touchstone in the denialist catalogue, and I thought I should try to find out, "Who are these guys?"
Well, Dennis Avery is not a scientist. Not that there's anything wrong with that, neither am I.
He studied agricultural economics at Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin, held a mid level state department position under President Reagan, and is now a "Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute",
a right wing think tank. where he has labored for years writing bestsellers
such as "Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic", and warning Americans about the deadly dangers of Organic Food.
S. Fred Singer, it turns out, is a scientist. He is an atmospheric physicist with an impressive resume, and academic stints at several major universities.
In the 1990s, Doctor Singer became well known for moonlighting outside his field as a consultant to Tobacco industry, and as a critic of attempts to regulate second hand smoke.
He was a long time consultant to the tobacco lobby in a well funded effort to
"restore smoker confidence" .
He recently spoke to an interviewer about any moral concerns he may have had about taking money from the tobacco industry.
--
interview with Singer
--
Throughout the 1990s, he was also writing Op eds in the Wall Street Journal and other venues saying that global warming did not exist.
Sometime prior to the publication of this book, he apparently switched his position. Now Global warming not only exists, but it is natural, and unstoppable.
The book itself is an unremarkable catalog of the standard climate denial crocks,.
The innovation the title refers to is a supposed "1500 year cycle" of unstoppable global warming.
This reference it to research on ice core data from Greenland, which shows that
during previous glacial periods, there have been
occasional spikes in temperature over the ice sheet, on approximately a 1500 year cycle. Sometimes the cycle skips a beat, and goes to 3000 years, or another multiple of 1500. Not enough to melt the ice sheet, but noticeable in the core record, and intriguing to climatologists.
They're called Dansgaard Oeschger events.
The question that scientists have been trying to address is, are these
global temperature events, or regional anomalies due to changes in heat flow from Ocean currents or other causes.
More recent data from similar ice cores at the southern polar cap provide some answers.
Here's are some graphs of temperature data from ice cores. The top graph is from
Greenland, the bottom from Antarctica.
I'll be zooming in on this to make the important details clear.
Remember, the top is greenland, the bottom is Antarctica.
you'll see the graph coming in from the left, which is data starting about 90 thousand years back.
Notice, as the temperature goes up in Greenland, at the same time, it drops in Antarctica. Want to see it again?
There you go.
Up in Greenland, down in Antarctica.
And again.
here the record skips a beat or two, and then it happens again.
Up in the north, down in the south.
Up in the north, down in the south.
Up in the north, and down in the south.
Do you think you can pick one out without the red arrows?
Of course you can, there it is - up in the north, down in the south.
Dansgaard Oeschger events are significant features of the global climate cycle, but they are regional,
not global, warming events.
It's what the most current climate science refers to as a 'bipolar see saw"
between northern and southern hemispheres.
It's a redistribution of heat, a change in the heat flow between north and south, possibly related to ocean currents.
When one part of the planet warms, another cools at the same time.
So, current scientific consensus is that the so called 1500 year cycle is not
the global event that the denialists would like you to believe.
so, where does this leave our friends? Dr Singer is continues to lecture,
maintaining that global warming is not real, unless it is real, in which case, its natural and unstoppable.
Mr Avery has taken another tack.
In a recent interview, unstoppable warming is gone, and, "..a cooling phase is begun, which is likely to last for 25 to 30 years."
Confused?
Don't be.
That's how they work.
They are paid to mislead, obscure, obfuscate, and create
paralysis.
It's a time tested technique.
And every week that goes by that America does nothing about Climate,
the fossil fuel companies who support these "think tanks" make billions more
dollars.
It makes perfect
sense.
Business wise.
So, let's review.
Organic food is safe.
Cigarrettes are not.
And Climate change is real.
I've been getting lots of real great feedback on this climate series.
Please continue to comment, send feedback and questions, and tell your
friends, especially your denier friends, about these videos.
I'll continue to make sure that that the very best information is available here,
and in coming weeks, we'll tackle all your favorite climate crocks.
Thanks for watching.