I provide this quick analysis as an example of using basic logic, common sense and a little digging to show how climate skeptics promote misinformation and warp real science out of context.
The Science and Public Policy Institute is a non-governmental organization that alleges to promote sound legislation and policy making through factual science as described in their mission statement:
The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) provides research and educational materials dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science. We support the advancement of sensible public policies rooted in rational science and economics. Only through science and factual information, separating reality from rhetoric, can legislators develop beneficial policies without unintended consequences that might threaten the life, liberty, and prosperity of the citizenry. [1]
The majority of the publications available on SPPI’s website are authored by either “staff” or Christopher Monckton, who is listed as the organization’s Chief Policy Advisor. Mr. Monckton has a long history of controversial views on various topics including climate change, AIDS, and social policy to name a few [2], suggesting he is a combination of a combative confrontationalist and a professional controversialist. The particular article I’m examining is labeled as an original SPPI paper titled “No Global Warming For Almost Two Decades” and is freely available from [3].
The article by Monckton is a response to an inquiry asking SPPI “to comment on the apparent inconsistency between the news that July 2012 was the warmest July since 1895 in the contiguous United States and the news that the Meteorological Office in the UK has cut its global warming forecast for the coming years.” [3] Monckton claims that NOAA’s temperature data is heavily skewed and the Met Office’s models were previously flawed and the newer models show no long term temperature increase.
The article itself does not provide a single reference or citation to the many data and claims made by Monckton, which is seemingly counter-productive to SPPI’s mission by deviating from a non-standard publishing format. In the rest of this essay I examine some of the claims or quoted information Monckton. My goal is to provide a more thorough examination of the mentioned sources in hopes of demonstrating the gross manipulation of factual science into a warped and skewed climate skeptic’s “science”.
The first portion of the paper is focused on the declaration of July 2012 being the hottest month ever on record in the contiguous United States,
Early in August 2012, the NOAA issued a statement to the effect that July 2012 had been the hottest month in the contiguous U.S. since records began in 1895. NOAA said the July 2012 temperature had been 77.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.2 F° warmer than the previous July record, set in 1936. [3]
Following this Monckton proceeds to point out a discrepancy between the data where the recorded temperature for July 2012 according to the NCDC (National Climate Data Center, a NOAA service) is reported as 76.89 F, therefore making July 2012 the second hottest July on record, July 1936 being the hottest at 77.4 F. Upon verifying the sources, the original statement from NOAA claiming July 2012 to be the hottest month was obtained from its monthly State of the Climate report available from [4]. The discrepancy comes when one accesses historical temperature data from NCDC [5] which provides the new temperature reading.
This prompts the author to frame NOAA as an unreliable organization by the following statement,
For some unaccountable reason, NOAA has not issued any statement correcting its original false claim that July 2012 was the warmest July since 1895. [3]
This statement holds no validity. The State of the Climate report quoted by Monckton provides the following disclaimer,
PLEASE NOTE: All of the temperature and precipitation ranks and values are based on preliminary data. The ranks will change when the final data are processed, but will not be replaced on these pages. Graphics based on final data are provided on the Temperature and Precipitation Maps page and the Climate at a Glance page as they become available. [4]
Now we can see that NOAA has neither falsified data nor acted in any “unaccountable” manner, but perhaps Mr. Monckton has by either failing to thoroughly read and examine his sources or intentionally misrepresenting the data.
The second main topic of the paper focuses on climate model predictions, where the author strives to suggest that climate simulation models are highly exaggerated,
The NOAA, in its State of the Climate report for 2008, contained a paper by leading climate modelers which said: “The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for 15 years or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.” On the modelers’ own previously-stated criterion, then, the long period without warming indicates that the models have been exaggerating. [3]
The statement the author quotes is from the BAMS State of the Climate report for 2008 [6], of which NOAA contributes and the particular paper from which the statement is quoted comes from [7]. The statement regarding “simulations rule out … zero treds…” is directly preceded by this statement,
Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability.
This is another great example that demonstrates how a simple statement out of context is easily used to provide a false premise to an author’s argument. The results of the paper in [7] from which the author twisted the phrase if you will, state the following:
Given the likelihood that internal variability contributed to the slowing of global temperature rise in the last decade, we expect that warming will resume in the next few years, consistent with predictions from near-term climate forecasts (Smith et al. 2007; Haines et al. 2009). [6]
Perhaps Mr. Monckton’s decision to not cite any of his sources was purely intentional with hopes that those who read his paper would be too lazy to fact check them or simply content with the notion that because the paper came from a website claiming to promote factual science, then all of its originally authored content was accurate. Regardless of the author’s motivation and his organization’s lax publication requirements, I would hope the everyday reader is just as skeptical as I was about an article that doesn’t cite it sources.
References
[1] SPPI Website. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/our_mission.html
[2] Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. In Wikipedia. Retrieved February 18th, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley
[3] Monckton, Christopher. No Global Warming for Almost Two Decades. 2013. SPPI. Retrieved February 18th, 2013, from http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/no_global_warming_for_almost_two_decades.html
[4] NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: National Overview for July 2012, published online August 2012, retrieved on February 18, 2013 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/7.
[5] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
[6] Peterson, T. C., and M. O. Baringer, Eds., 2009: State of the Climate in 2008. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 90, S1–S196.
[7] Knight, J.; Kennedy, J. J.; Folland, C.; Harris, G.; Jones, G. S.; Palmer, M.; Parker, D.; Scaife, A.; Stott, P. DO GLOBAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS OVER THE LAST DECADE FALSIFY CLIMATE PREDICTIONS? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society;Aug2009 State of the Climate, Vol. 90 Issue 8, pS22.