On several occasions I've left detailed comments explaining why things are wrong on Huffpost blog posts. Huffpost routinely kills these comments. I have also noted other commenters there occasionally getting in the same complaint. Substantive criticism not wanted? You be the judge.
A couple of days ago Michael Shermer posted this farrago of global warming denialist nonsense in a blog post at Huffington Post. Shermer is the well-known Skeptic and Scientific American columnist. His stuff is usually pretty good, but I know of a number of skeptics who have thrown in their lot with Denialism v2.0 (ok, it's warming, but it ain't gonna be that bad). Below the fold let's have a look.
Shermer opens with a flat out error, which I pointed out in my Huffpost comment:
I provisionally accept the estimate of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the mean global temperature by 2100 will increase by 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and that sea levels will rise by about one foot (about the same as they have risen since 1860). Moderate warming with moderate changes.
Actually, here is what Chapter 6 of the IPPC report says:
Anticipated climate-related changes include: an accelerated rise in sea level of up to 0.6 m or more by 2100; a further rise in sea surface temperatures by up to 3°C; an intensification of tropical and extra-tropical cyclones; larger extreme waves and storm surges; altered precipitation/run-off; and ocean acidification [6.3.2]. These phenomena will vary considerably at regional and local scales, but the impacts are virtually certain to be overwhelmingly negative [6.4, 6.5.3].
There are three problems here. The first is that he erred in saying the IPCC rise was a foot, when it is actually 0.6m, or about twice that. The second error is more telling -- he never informs the reader, as anyone educated in climate change knows, that the IPCC is incredibly conservative and has consistently underestimated the rate of change. The third way in which in he downplays the report is that he represents the IPCC as saying sea levels will rise about a foot. But as the IPCC says, 0.6 meters OR MORE is expected. In other words, this has every appearance of lying-by-deprecation.
I believe he is deliberately lying because he next moves on to Bjorn Lomborg, the well known voice-of-Screwtape denialist who has moved from an outright denial position (v1.0) to Denial 2.0 (ok, so it is warming, but it's not as big a problem as you think, just go ahead and burn more coal). Lomborg is a shill for the fossil fuel industry, and Shermer knows that, for he says:
If you are skeptical of Lomborg and his branch of environmental skepticism, read the Yale University economist William Nordhaus' technical book A Question of Balance (Yale University Press, 2008).
In other words Shermer is aware that there are problems with Lomborg. How could Shermer be aware of that, yet not know that the IPCC has long been criticized in the climate science community for being too conservative? The question is purely rhetorical.
Speaking of rhetoric, I have to admire the way Shermer manipulates the reader. After triggering the reader's bullshit alert with Lomborg, he then invites the reader to question their own beliefs by turning to William Nordhaus, a Yale economist. Most people are unlikely to have heard of Nordhaus even if they know Lomborg, so by turning to Nordhaus as an authority, he leverages the reader's own intellectual integrity, the reader's willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt, to promote acceptance of Lomborg's v2.0 Denialist nonsense. He even refers to it as Nordhaus' "technical book" in order to legitimate it further in the reader's eyes. Nicely done!
But this too is problematic. Nordhaus has old links to the Denialist movement, to the George C. Marshall Institute, founded back in 1984 when global warming was not yet in the public eye but was already a scientific issue. Marshall is hard right, in addition to working on Denialism, it also promotes strategic missile defense. It is of course a recipient of Exxon largesse.
Naturally Shermer does not mention that. Either Shermer does not know that Nordhaus is oldline Denialist, or else he is concealing it from the reader. I personally am with B on that, for it can't be a coincidence that he picks two v2.0 Denialism advocates to fill his column.
The column itself is full of nonsense, and the alert reader will be able to find many problems in it. My own favorite passage is:
That is, a $1 trillion cost today buys us $3 trillion of benefits in a century. Al Gore's proposals, by contrast, score a minus 21, where $1 trillion invested today in Gore's plans would net us a loss of $21 trillion in 2105.
Not only is that math methodology completely whacko, but note that Shermer slyly drags in Al Gore's name, as if seeking to ensure that each knee has been properly jerked.
I pointed out these issues (and others), and told Huffpost it should be ashamed of itself for hosting Denialist crap. Huffpost apparently didn't like that, and so my comments appear here, where 500,000 daily visitors can potentially see them, instead of appended to the end of a post where few would bother.
I hope that Huffpost editors refrain from putting up Denialist bullshit in the future, and more strongly factcheck their bloggers. And stop killing comments that show the poster is substantially incorrect, and in this case, in all probability highly disingenuous.
I'll close with Shermer's conclusion:
In my opinion we need to chill out on all extremist plans that entail expenses best described as Brobdingnagian, require our intervention into developing countries best portrayed as imperialistic, or involve state controls best portrayed as fascistic. Give green technologies and free markets a chance.
We gave free markets a chance, Michael. And they gave us global warming that is destroying the world.
Vorkosigan