No one likes to hear “told ya so,” but given that we often opine before some of the experts take time to fully assess, we thought it would be nice to go over a few recent reaffirmations.
Last month, our take on the latest “warming is natural” paper from Jennifer Marohasy, for example, pointed to some preliminary criticisms. Since then, Climate Feedback has done a more in-depth analysis, which confirms and builds on previous criticisms. It is flat out incorrect to assert that most warming could be natural, Climate Feedback finds, and the physics-blind, curve-fitting exercise laid out in Marohasy’s faulty study is, in the words of one expert, “scientific nonsense.”
On the legal front, we flagged earlier this month that Trump’s regulatory rollback was apt to run into legal troubles for being arbitrary and capricious. Well, that’s exactly what the 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in regard to the Bureau of Land Management's claim that coal mines shouldn’t be judged on climate factors (because, they said, if the coal isn’t burned in one place it will be in another). It turns out that when doing Environmental Impact Assessments, you still have to address climate impacts and the possibility (and likelihood) that cleaner sources of energy will replace coal.
We often point to examples of the fossil fuel industry adapting Big Tobacco playbook to delay climate action. Over in his latest Guardian column, Graham Readfearn writes on a recent book by Duke history professor Nancy MacLean that traces the history of one of denial’s favorite talking points: “alarmists are just in it for the money.” MacLean’s book points out how this argument was twisted to apply to cancer researchers who “don’t really want to find a cure, because if they did they’d be out of a job.” As ghoulish as it sounds, that’s exactly the line of reasoning some smoking defenders wrote a whole book about in 1992.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, updates on the Pausebuster nontroversy we’ve roundly mocked: Scott Johnson at Ars Technica reported last week that a judge rejected a FOIA request for NOAA’s emails about the study. The judge decided the emails should not be released because the complaint’s claim “cites...a single article in a British tabloid” as its justification.
And about that single tabloid article: The Mail on Sunday was forced to publish a correction this weekend due to a ruling from the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The correction admits the Mail violated Clause 1 of the Editor’s Code of Practice of IPSO, which reads, “The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.”
Now whether or not this dose of reality will cause Rep. Lamar Smith to reconsider his anti-NOAA crusade remains to be seen. But we do know that Bob Ward (who brought the complaint that resulted in the correction) has made the effort to send a letter to Smith, with the copy of the decisions. Ward is also sending it to NOAA’s acting administrator and Democratic Ranking Member of the Science Committee Rep. Bernice Johnson. That way we can all be sure everyone knows Smith’s letter requesting further info “was based on a fake news story.”
So our apologies for taking a victory lap, but it is nice to be reassured that what we’ve written has aged well. Time and again we see that fake news-driven climate denial is pound-foolish, and not even penny wise.
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