Weather Channel To Breitbart: Stop Citing Us To Spread Climate Skepticism (weather.com)

Breitbart.com published an article last week that erroneously claims global warming is coming to an end, claiming "global land temperatures have plummeted by 1 degree Celsius since the middle of the year -- the biggest and steepest fall on record." The Weather Channel finds this report especially upsetting as it's not only inaccurate but it features a video from weather.com at the top of the article. The Weather Channel reports: Breitbart had the legal right to use this clip as part of a content-sharing agreement with another company, but there should be no assumption that The Weather Company endorses the article associated with it. The Breitbart article -- a prime example of cherry picking, or pulling a single item out of context to build a misleading case -- includes this statement: "The last three years may eventually come to be seen as the final death rattle of the global warming scare." In fact, thousands of researchers and scientific societies are in agreement that greenhouse gases produced by human activity are warming the planet's climate and will keep doing so. Along with its presence on the high-profile Breitbart site, the article drew even more attention after a link to it was retweeted by the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. The Breitbart article heavily references a piece that first appeared on U.K. Daily Mail's site. The Weather Channel went on to refute the Breitbart article's hypothesis: This number comes from one satellite-based estimate of temperatures above land areas in the lower atmosphere. Data from the other two groups that regularly publish satellite-based temperature estimates show smaller drops, more typical of the decline one would expect after a strong El Nino event. Temperatures over land give an incomplete picture of global-scale temperature. Most of the planet -- about 70 percent -- is covered by water, and the land surface warms and cools more quickly than the ocean. Land-plus-ocean data from the other two satellite groups, released after the Breitbart article, show that Earth's lower atmosphere actually set a record high in November 2016.

Comments

You know what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's getting close to the point that the schadenfreude of seeing morons get their due makes up for the fact that we all will be screwed.

So by all means lets call climate change a hoax. When the inevitable calamities fall, I suspect the deplorables and Breitbart readers will be disproportionately affected and not only will I not shed a tear but I will kick dirt in their faces.

Re: You know what?

[Type44Q]

There is enough evidence, now, to show that global warming is most likely not a real threat.

Physicists in Los Alamos hammered out the basics of global warming during the Manhattan Project (as well as plans for future large-scale geoengineering). In the late 80's, NATO held a summit where further plans and details (re: offsetting global warming) were discussed . So, if we've been witnessing a drop in observed temperatures, perhaps TPTB are actually doing something about it. Either way, use that goddamn excuse for a brain and don't be so fucking gullible.

We knew this going in

[Okian Warrior]

It's getting close to the point that the schadenfreude of seeing morons get their due makes up for the fact that we all will be screwed.

So by all means lets call climate change a hoax. When the inevitable calamities fall, I suspect the deplorables and Breitbart readers will be disproportionately affected and not only will I not shed a tear but I will kick dirt in their faces.

Ok, so which is more important: everyone in the country slipping into poverty and terrorist attacks from immigrants next year, or...

Global warming, only [our] part of which can fixed by us, is driven by political corruption, and won't affect us for a couple of decades?

Of these issues, political corruption is the biggest impediment to rational climate change action. Getting rid of that has to come first, and only then can we expect to make progress on the other issues.

Do you think anything would get done under a Clinton administration?

We knew Trump had shortcomings, and still elected him - warts and all. We did it because he promised to fix certain issues that we felt were more important in the near term. Global warming will kill us, but, mass poverty will kill us sooner.

I'm completely happy taking steps to curb global warming, but a) I want to be safe doing it, and b) I want to eat first.

Get some perspective. Not everything Trump is going to do will be bad, and you always have 2024 to look forward to.

Re:We knew this going in

[dywolf]

china is an ascendant power.
they have the worlds largest economy.
they have the worlds fastest growing economy, growing at 8% GDP year after year for the past 14 years or so, including during the global recession.

they even surpassed the US in Purchasing Power Parity , giving rise to a new ascendant middle class in their country.
many European nations had already done so, having more social programs that support people and so stretch their money further.
But the fact china, seen still as a 3rd world hell hole by many (ignorant) americans, has also done it now.

China has in fact been a bit help with NK, being one of the few countries capable of restraining them, that NK is willing to listen to.

Start a fight?
Yes.
They very well might.

Learn your history, specifically Thucydides’s Trap.

We risk China being the Athens to our Sparta, even without Trump throwing all diplomatic caution to the wind.
Hint: it didn't turn out well for Sparta, nor most of the rest of the greek peninsula.

Re:Once truth gasps its last breath...

[Curunir_wolf]

then our democracy truly is dead. We aren't there yet. I still have hope, but any government that relies on propaganda to gain and hold power is the opposite of a democracy, and that is the road we are traveling toward.

"Traveling toward"? Really? Take a look in the rear view mirror, buddy, that fork in the road is WAY back behind you. You've been on the road for a LONG time!

I like how this is just now a problem

[nimbius]

When neoconservatives spread outright fabrications and lies about obamacare, nobody took the time to correct them. When they spread lies about the iraq war, we just went along for the ride. when they bullshit their way through school vouchers for religious schools and tax breaks for the rich we never seemed to care, and when they launched an all out ban on abortion and started jailing women for miscarriages nobody seemed to bat an eyelash. When they stood firmly against gay marriage and firmly against trans rights, it was unfortunate but all we could do was hope for a boycott.

but oh god, now that Hillary has lost the election its a coalition the likes of which weve never seen. Every media conglomerate, every online site, every technological oligarch is now combining forces to fight even the most mundane attempts --breitbart-- at conservative shilling. the conservative brand is being labelled alt-right fake news, and anything so much as potentially bullshit is being hammered into the ground quickly and mercilessly. part of me thinks this would never have happened if we just gave the woman her damn dream job. then again, part of me cant seem to get past the fact that Trump is the only reason in 2016 we have this type of car-torching, block-wrecking catharsis against the brand at all.

Re: Stop calling it "skepticism".

[PopeRatzo]

I can contribute to this discussion, but I have to post anonymously for reasons that will be obvious. I work at a major research institution along the east coast. I am paid well, well into six figures, as a climate researcher. My job is to fabricate data, but to make it believable enough that people accept our research is true. I can assure you that most climate research, like my own, is fabricated and completely false.

My favorite part of this is that this numbskull thinks there's a climate scientist who makes six figures.

Re: Stop calling it "skepticism".

[hey!]

The history of greenhouse effect theory is interesting and well worth reading up on. It was first raised as a possibility in the 1890s, but rejected quickly based on two erroneous beliefs: (1) that the oceans would rapidly absorb any increase in atmospheric CO2 and (2) that the absorption spectra of water vapor and CO2 mostly overlapped. Together these implied that CO2 could not increase in the atmosphere, and even if it did it could not capture any heat that water vapor wouldn't have anyway.

There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, which Wikipedia does a pretty good job of summarizing. I highly recommend reading that article.

Re:How do you demand honesty

[locofungus]

they assume that the only thing that matters is winning

This is, unfortunately, an inherent trait in humans.

There was, many years ago, a "competition" in Scientific American to win up to $1M

The rules were:
1. Random draw from all the entries received
2. You could enter as many times as you liked - to make this easier you could write multiple entries on a single postcard. (write the number of entries you wanted to submit on your postcard)
3. Final prize was $1M divided by the total number of entries.

It was estimated that there was in the order of 10K readers of the column. (Actually I think it was less than this but I can't be bothered to try and track down the columns again now) There had also been a detailed discussion of the prisoners dilemma and other related problems in the previous weeks.

It's immediately obvious that to win $1M you need to be the only entrant and send in a postcard with a single entry on it.

If every subscriber sent in a single postcard with a single entry on it then someone would win of the order of $100.

But some people sent in huge numbers - the postcard filled with '9's. Others went one better and put a 9 and then filled the postcard with '!'s (factorial). Others went even further.

IIRC the author (Douglas Hofstadter) wasn't actually able to determine who the winner was. He lacked the ability to randomly select from the total number of entries. He couldn't even tell which of the numbers was actually the largest.

However, whoever won, the number of entries was so large that the prize was zero for all intents and purposes.

Some people got it - some wrote in to say that they hadn't submitted an entry because they had metaphorically "tossed a coin" and lost and so allowed someone else to win a bigger prize. But so many people were more interested in winning nothing than someone winning something.