disinformation (noun)
dis·in·for·ma·tion | \ (ˌ)dis-ˌin-fər-ˈmā-shən \
: false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by the planting of rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth
–Merriam-Webster
zombie (noun)
[zom·bee]
: the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose
–Dictionary.com
Since I’ve been writing the Frog Blog, a number of friends have encouraged me to create a section to debunk false claims and arguments about climate change. So far, I have not done that. I’ve found the prospect exhausting. Using a strategy straight from the playbook used earlier by the tobacco industry, the fossil fuel industry generously funds nonprofit organizations, like The Heartland Institute, which employ people in the wicked pursuit of writing and disseminating superficially scientific-sounding disinformation with the express purpose of sowing confusion and division in our collective efforts to understand and deal with the climate crisis, efforts which clearly threaten the fossil fuel industry. I’ve written about this elsewhere. Also read this nice paper and this one.
There’s an aspect of asymmetric warfare to the tactic behind climate disinformation. Institutional liars are employed by fossil fuel companies (effectively untraceably, thanks to our opaque financial disclosure laws) to write devilish hit jobs on climate science, which are probably easy to write since (as we’ll see) they usually don’t bother to provide much in the way of data, references, or context. Debunking them requires data, references, and context, the assembly of which are time-consuming. This blog is funded entirely by my free time, and I help my wife support my family with my day job. I’m outgunned, if my strategy were to try to debunk every nefariously false blog post created by these well-funded writers. Certainly, it’s been much more straightforward and satisfying to simply report on the science conducted by actual scientists, which is backed up by data and citations, and communicated with the intention to educate.
But two things happened. First, I was asked to debunk a particular article by a person I respect a great deal when it comes to the climate: Steve O’Neil, CEO of REC Group. He’s in my Facebook feed, by which I see REC Group’s busy activities supplying solar silicon wafers, cells, and modules for giant solar installations, at a feverish pace, all over the world; seeing photos of these beautiful installations is among my most hopeful moments each day. Second, having read over the past couple years quite a lot of actual climate science, as well as quite a few of these climate hit pieces, I can now see that the hit pieces have common attributes I think we can all learn to recognize. By debunking one, and using that as a template to illustrate these attributes, I think I can provide value by helping others recognize disinformation when they see it. Maybe I don’t have to debunk them all.
So here we go. The following article was the assigned homework from Steve, Mighty Wielder of Photovoltaics:
NASA admits that climate change occurs because of changes in Earth’s solar orbit, and NOT because of SUVs and fossil fuels
-Author Ethan Huff, published August 30, 2019, NaturalNews.com
It’s a relatively short read. Read it, but promise to come back before it eats your brain. Then, we’ll get to work.
The first 3 paragraphs set out an introductory narrative that the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has known for 60 years that changes to our Earth’s climate are “natural and normal,” but “for whatever reason” has “chosen to sit silently back and watch” as the human-caused climate change “hoax” has persisted.
(What would motivate NASA, the American organization that won the Space Race, brought us the moon landings, explored the solar system —and beyond — with the Voyager probes, and is currently exploring Mars with robot cars, to “sit silently back” while we all totally misunderstood our own planet is baffling to me. But “for whatever reason,” I guess.)
By a link in the first paragraph, we learn this article is derivative, as it references an earlier and very similar article posted on August 8 on the website of the Hal Turner Radio Show.
The first verifiable fact of the article appears in the first sentence of paragraph 4, a reference to an article published by NASA on its Earth Observatory website (among my very favorite websites; never stop looking at it!) in the year 2000:
“In the year 2000, NASA did publish information on its Earth Observatory website about the Milankovitch Climate Theory, revealing that the planet is, in fact, changing due to extraneous factors that have absolutely nothing to do with human activity.”
-Claim on NaturalNews.com that is both true and total B.S. (I’m about to prove)
Briefly, the article then goes on to recount how NASA has been outclassed by a Serbian astrophysicist, Milutin Milankovitch, who discovered prior to his death in 1958 that changes in our Earth’s climate occur due to periodically shifting eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of our Earth’s orbit around the sun.
(At which point in the article, incidentally, I encounter the following embedded advertisement:
This would appear to be an advertisement for the “extraordinary benefits of turmeric gummy bears” embedded within our purportedly scientific article, buying of which help “support” the owner of NaturalNews.com. Real science articles don’t feature these.)
Well, I did some research, and Milutin Milankovitch (a serious scientist) was exactly right. His findings have been verified, and NASA has helped do that. It’s just not remotely the whole story.
To start out, I found that NASA did indeed publish information about the Milankovitch Climate Theory on its excellent Earth Observatory website in the year 2000. I found this out by going to Earth Observatory and typing into its search bar, “Milankovitch Climate Theory.” The first hit in that search is this article published by NASA on March 24, 2000.
The article recounts how Milutin Milankovitch (1879-1958), a Serbian mathematician, astronomer, and climatologist, formulated a theory that Earth’s periodic glacial periods have been a result of subtle, repeating changes in our Earth’s orbit about the sun. His theory was mostly ignored for 50 years. But then, in 1976, a study in the journal Science described how analysis of deep-sea sediment cores showed major climate variations over the past 450,000 years did indeed correspond to the variations in Earth’s orbit calculated by Milankovitch.
Having referenced this year 2000 NASA article, Ethan Huff goes on to reproduce a number of complicated-looking diagrams illustrating periodic variations in our Earth’s orbit. Then, he rushes to conclude:
“If we had to sum the whole thing up in one simple phrase, it would be this: The biggest factor influencing weather and climate patterns on earth is the sun, period.”
-Ethan Huff, rushing to a conclusion
Here’s the thing. That search I did on NASA Earth Observatory, “Milankovitch Climate Theory,” yielded the following 5 hits, all in the same list:
- Mar 24, 2000 — Milutin Milankovitch (the article we’ve been talking about so far)
- May 9, 2006 — Paleoclimatology: Examining the Evidence
- Nov 5, 2007 — Earth’s Temperature Tracker
- Jun 14, 2009 — Climate and Earth’s Energy Budget
- Jun 3, 2010 — Global Warming
The 2006 article contains a link at the bottom to another article entitled, “Explaining Rapid Climate Change: Tales from the Ice.” This article basically recounts what I’ve written about in detail in Episodes 5-7 of my Brief History of Climate Change: how recent, rapid changes in both global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration could not be explained by Milankovitch’s theory.
The 2007 article recounts how, around 1970, Milankovitch’s theory would have predicted our Earth was headed for another cooling trend, but other scientists (including the famous James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies) instead predicted and observed a warming trend due to fossil fuel emissions, which appeared to be overwhelming our Earth’s previously natural climate variations.
The 2009 article contains an excellent introduction to the greenhouse effect, as well as a section entitled “Climate Forcings and Global Warming” that includes the following explanatory sentences:
“Natural climate forcings include changes in the Sun’s brightness, Milankovitch cycles (small variations in the shape of Earth’s orbit and its axis of rotation that occur over thousands of years), and large volcanic eruptions that inject light-reflecting particles as high as the stratosphere. Manmade forcings include particle pollution (aerosols), which absorb and reflect incoming sunlight; deforestation, which changes how the surface reflects and absorbs sunlight; and the rising concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which decrease heat radiated to space.”
–2009 NASA article, placing natural Milankovitch cycles within the greater context of all the other mechanisms that can alter Earth’s climate
The 2010 article again lists natural sources of climate change, including Milankovitch cycles, before going on to say,
“In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes not related to human activity … These natural causes are still in play today, but their influence is too small or they occur too slowly to explain the rapid warming seen in recent decades. We know this because scientists closely monitor the natural and human activities that influence climate with a fleet of satellites and surface instruments.”
–2010 NASA article, further clarifying that natural causes of climate change, including the well-understood Milankovitch cycles, do not explain rapid warming of the Earth’s surface over recent decades
It would seem that a discussion of Milankovitch Climate Theory alone lacks critical context when discussing the overall observed global warming trend in the decades since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800’s.
But all of the above NASA Earth Observatory references, including the earliest one referenced by Ethan Huff of NaturalNews.com, contain the following disclaimer right at the top of the article:
They appear to be old, static pages. Scientific knowledge is ever evolving and improving. If we really want to understand the current state of climate science, it makes sense to look for a more recent publication.
One such reference is the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the most recent of periodic climate assessment reports prepared by the U.S. government every 4 years since the early 1990’s. Published in November, 2018, the Fourth National Climate Assessment was prepared by over 300 climate scientists and policy experts spread across 13 departments and agencies of the federal government. In Volume II, Chapter 2, we find the following set of graphs:
In all 3 graphs, the black line is the actual measured global temperature since 1880. (This measurement has been performed by 4 independent groups in 3 different countries, with very similar results, as I’ve detailed here.) The top graph shows the modeled (mathematically predicted) temperature accounting for 3 natural influences in isolation, as well as all 3 of those combined (yellow). Milankovitch cycles are included! Calculations based on the Milankovitch Climate Theory appear in the top graph as the brown line labeled, “Orbital.” Milankovitch cycles occur on a time scale of thousands of years and, as can be seen in the graph, haven’t accounted for much of a change in temperature over the relatively short time since 1880.
The middle graph shows the modeled temperature according to 4 human influences in isolation, as well as all 4 of those combined (red). It’s clear that human influences, especially greenhouse gases, best explain the observed temperature increase. The bottom graph shows, in orange, the modeled temperature summing all the human and natural influences together. The modeled temperature matches the measured temperature very closely, suggesting modern climate science has developed quite a refined understanding of the climate.
So, the Milankovitch Climate Theory is accounted for in our understanding of the climate, and it matters. With respect to global warming since the Industrial Revolution, it matters just exactly as much as shown by the brown line in the top graph. Indeed, the calculations of Milutin Milankovitch have contributed substantially to our understanding of the climate by explaining the periodic cycling of the Earth’s climate between glacial periods and interglacial periods that occurs approximately every 100,000 years. These represent significant natural changes in Earth’s climate, for sure, but it’s important to note that human beings have already lived through two such natural cycles, during which the atmospheric CO2 concentration never left a range between 184 and 287 ppm.
(Earth’s temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration move together during these natural cycles, due to a series of feedback loops between them. For example, a warming ocean caused by a warming phase of the Milankovitch cycle releases CO2 into the atmosphere because the solubility of CO2 in water falls with increasing temperature. This extra CO2 then causes more warming by the greenhouse effect. And so on. But when the Milankovitch cycle again enters a cooling phase, both temperature and CO2 again drop via the same feedback loops.)
Thanks to our greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution, the atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 415 ppm this past May, so we are deep into uncharted territory for our species. And, as I recently wrote about, we see glimmers of multiple of those feedback loops by which rising temperature and CO2 could reinforce one another in ways we cannot control.
In short, the graph above shows the Milankovitch Climate Theory not to be a significant factor explaining the recent, rapid increase in global temperature. And Ethan Huff’s super rushy conclusion that climate change has nothing to do with fossil fuels is certainly not supported by the data.
But the conclusion of Huff’s article is not simply wrong. It’s impossible to escape the conclusion that it’s a clever and very intentional lie. As I summarized above, the very same web search that yields the year 2000 NASA article Huff references — the one based on which Huff reproduces a bunch of complex diagrams illustrating details of Earth’s orbital cycles — also yields four additional NASA articles that place the Milankovitch Climate Theory in context and unambiguously explain how human-induced greenhouse gas emissions have dwarfed the effects of the Milankovitch cycle in recent decades. Surely, Huff must have run across those articles as well. Why not mention that content?
Huff has selectively advanced a zombie argument — a once real scientific investigation that has long been settled science. He has wickedly re-animated poor Milutin Milankovitch’s dead mouth to say something Milankovitch, a serious scientist, would certainly never have said, had he lived past 1958 (the year when, coincidentally, direct atmospheric CO2 measurements began).
So there it is. Lying article rebutted. Drop the mike.
So how do we recognize climate disinformation when we see it? Or at least, what clues should make us suspicious?
- Like all good lies, they contain a kernel of truth. But the kernel may seem too simple.
If you read my Brief History of Climate Science, you’ll see that the climate has been studied in detail for over 100 years now. After this substantial research, our knowledge about the climate has been built up by a massive number of interwoven threads of knowledge from multiple scientific disciplines — geologists, atmospheric scientists, astronomers, oceanographers, physicists, chemists, biologists, meteorologists, statisticians, computer scientists, and so on. (Good examples of the interwoven — and self-correcting — nature of scientific inquiry appear in Episode 3 of my Brief History.) Many threads of independent scientific inquiry agree, creating an understanding of human-caused climate change that’s like a thick, braided rope. This is why over 99% of scientists have the consensus opinion that climate change is real and caused by us, a consensus that has itself been studied scientifically. Someone wishing to assert that human-induced climate change is not real would need to unravel and explain in a different way this entire rope of agreeing data. In this example, Huff produces one single truth, the Milankovitch Climate Theory (which, as I’ve summarized above, is already braided into the rope) and then tries to use that to argue against this whole rope made up of the individual contributions of countless independent scientific conclusions. It’s pathetic, really. Huff would have to explain, for example, how the rising CO2 concentration (which is a measured fact) has somehow not resulted in a temperature increase, even though we know CO2 absorbs infrared sun radiation reflected from the Earth. - Fake science writing often lacks context and fails to reference other scientific work.
Click on any real scientific article from my Bibliography, or embedded in my Brief History of Climate Science, and you’ll see that any one of those articles is replete with citations to other related scientific work. Real scientists consider it part of their job, whenever writing about scientific findings, to reference related scientific work that puts their communication in context and serves to support any conclusions or arguments they make. Like many “fake science” articles, Ethan Huff’s references only (1) a similar — in fact, almost identical — earlier article on the website of the Hal Turner Radio Show (we’ll get to that in a moment), and (2) a single, old, archived NASA web page (which, as I’ve discussed above, is used selectively without regard to other references that appear in the same search). There is no effort to place Milankovitch’s theory in context with other readily available scientific knowledge about the climate. And, other than that, it’s all opinion. - Fake science often ignores the accepted scientific practice that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Ethan Huff asserts that all of mainstream climate science is wrong. Overturning an established theory in science is certainly possible, and has occurred. For example, Einstein’s theory of relativity superseded the previously well-accepted Newtonian theory of mechanics (at that time 200 years old). The burden of proof on Einstein was extremely high, requiring multiple publications and pages and pages of mathematical proofs. Einstein showed how Newtonian physics were an extremely good approximation of his new theory under most circumstances, but how they broke down in other situations (involving large objects and high speeds). This explained how Newtonian mechanics had been so successful for so long. Ethan Huff offers up one bit of “evidence,” then asserts that all of a 100-year-old body of scientific knowledge about the climate is wrong. He offers no explanation for how all the world’s scientists have collected various bodies of evidence with which his conclusion starkly disagrees. Sorry, that’s just not good enough. - Research and consider the credentials of the source.
It’s not elitist to say the expertise of a person making a scientific claim matters. Would you have a dentist fix your car? Would you have an auto mechanic fix your teeth? If your answer to those questions is “no,” then probably you should rely on scientists for your scientific understanding of the climate. I could not find any specific reference to the training of Ethan Huff, author of the article debunked herein. He reports himself to be “a freelance writer and health enthusiast.” The founder and owner of NaturalNews.com, the blog on which the article appears, is Mike Adams. Mike Adams’ education is described as follows on his own website: “Mike Adams has a four-year bachelor of science degree from a prominent university in the Midwest. He has minors in mathematics and economics.” His website has been widely panned within the real scientific community for spreading false information and conspiracy theories. At various times, NaturalNews.com has been de-listed by Google, YouTube, and Facebook for violation of their terms of service. The article we’ve been discussing appears to be a moderately modified re-print of an earlier article on the website of the Hal Turner Radio Show. Besides climate denialism, Hal Turner has also publicly espoused views of Holocaust denial and white supremacy, and he has called for the assassination of government officials. He spent 2 years in prison for making threats against a federal judge.
Let’s contrast the above credentials with those of an actual climate scientist. Just because her name comes to mind, I’ll choose Dr. Katharine Hayhoe, one of over 300 authors of the recent U.S. National Climate Assessment. Katharine’s credentials are detailed on her website. She has a Bachelors Degree in physics and astronomy (University of Toronto), and both a Masters Degree and Ph.D. in atmospheric science (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Aside from multiple U.S. National Climate Assessments, she has authored or co-authored over 125 peer-reviewed papers, abstracts, and other publications, most based on original climate research results. She is a professor at Texas Tech University. I found no evidence she has spent time in prison.
Who do you believe?
One last thought. In the regrettable era of “fake news,” we must consider the ethical implications of forwarding or promoting information we are unsure about. Lot’s of content we forward around on social media is harmless. When it comes to climate change, though, I would argue that the content we promote has a compelling moral dimension. The future our kids inherit — not abstract future kids, but the children and grandchildren we are reading bedtime stories to right now — depends on the actions we will take over about the next decade. And the correct actions depend on all of us agreeing on some basic facts.
Don’t be a zombie.
