Senate Report Debunks “Consensus” on Global Warming

Senator Inhofe’s latest U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007 is generating a lot of attention on right-wing news sources like Faux and the Mooney Times. A quick google search showed the parrotheads got the morning e-mail, and unthinkingly cut and pasted the appropriate quotes into their blogs the day after the report came out, all with the same title this post has.

It’s important to understand the type of report we are talking about here. This isn’t a scientific report, where great volumes of scientific data are gathered, analyzed, and peer-reviewed before conclusions are presented. This is citation report, a thesis statement is made, “There are scientists who dispute global warming theory,” and then news reports and Internet sources scoured to support it.

Because this is purely a political book report, it’s okay to examine the political background of it’s authors. Senator Inhofe is the ranking minority member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), the same Inhofe who has compared environmentalists to nazis, and has been the most vociferous skeptic of Global Warming of any politician. Marc Morano is one of Inhofe’s spokespeople, political consultant, and former reporter and producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show. So we know where their coming from.

These politicians have written a blockbuster report. We know it’s a blockbuster because the report tells us it’s a blockbuster:

This blockbuster Senate report lists the scientists by name, country of residence, and academic/institutional affiliation. It also features their own words, biographies, and weblinks to their peer reviewed studies and original source materials as gathered from public statements, various news outlets, and websites in 2007. This new “consensus busters” report is poised to redefine the debate. (Emphasis Mine)

I counted approximately 40 climatologists and 60 meteorologists, many of whom were TV weathermen, among those voicing doubts. Fair enough. But there were also approximately 60 physicists, 40 geologists, 15 biologists, and more than five astronomers listed as well. All of these various fields do have perspectives to contribute to Climate Change science, but it is not their field of expertise. The biggest stretch of all was the 20 economists counted among the skeptics. If Alan Greenspan were to voice skepticism of Global Warming tomorrow, I doubt it would get much media attention, but the parrotheads won’t think twice about economists appearing in this report as scientists.

You’re not going to see a lot of scientists responding to this report, and that’s because there isn’t any science to respond to. This isn’t a scientific report by any stretch of the imagination; it’s just a collection of quotes disputing everything from a warmer Earth being a bad thing, to other issues that should take priority over Global Warming, to the motivations of Al Gore, the IPCC, and Environmentalists.

Let’s remember the consensus on Global warming is that (1) it’s happening, and (2) humans are causing it. That’s all.

So when inventor Ray Kurzweil is cited as disagreeing with Al Gore on Global Warming because Kurzweil believes nanotechnology will solve Climate Change. Ray doesn’t dispute the consensus, he disputes that Global Warming is a problem because technology will solve it. Ray also believes we will all become immortal in a few decades by transcribing our brains into computers. Maybe half the scientists listed in this report are actually disputing the consensus, and much less then that number offer scientific arguments to back up their opinions.

Inhofe points out that “Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary;” and his report cites eight times that number. Technically correct, but so what? This is like saying, “Only one scientist took part in writing the IPCC report’s table of contents.” It only means something to unthinking parrotheads. The IPCC report was written by 600 authors from 40 countries, and reviewed by over 620 experts and governments. Inhofe’s report didn’t even have 52 scientists collaborate on it, as the IPCC summary did, it was written entirely by Inhofe’s spokespeople, who aren’t scientists at all, but political consultants. Inhofe is technically correct, but intellectually dishonest.

Inhofe’s report doesn’t hold a candle to the IPCC report because the IPCC Report is a collaboration, not just a cherry-picked list of opinions and names of people, many of whom probably don’t even know they are in his report. The IPCC Report’s scientists and reviewers were all tasked with figuring it out, and they engaged in scientific inquiry to best articulate the truth.

If Inhofe’s report was such an inquiry, then with 400 Scientists disputing global warming, why would Inhofe make science fiction author Michael Crichton his star witness before the Senate Committee investigating Global Warming? Because Inhofe’s list is not a collaboration, it is a grocery list assembled by his aides, who were tasked with digging up as many skeptics they could find.

Most of all, Inhofe’s report is total bull$#!% because I had better things to write about this weekend. The whole reason behind his perpetual stream of nonsense is simply to force people like Grist, Kos, energysmart, ClimateProgress, Andrew Revkin, and others to respond, perpetuating the myth of a debate and feeding parrothead self-righteous indignation. So long as they can keep us debating, they foster inaction. They win the argument just by arguing.

So Inhofe has scrounged up 400 scientists, the majority of whom are not climate scientists and the majority of whom are not demonstrated disputing the consensus on Anthropogenic Climate Change, and probably few, if any, know they were included in this book report.

On the other hand, we have the consensus on Global Warming, which has been explicitly endorsed by the Academia Brasiliera de Ciências (Bazil), Royal Society of Canada, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Academié des Sciences (France), Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany), Indian National Science Academy, Accademia dei Lincei (Italy), Science Council of Japan, Russian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society (United Kingdom), National Academy of Sciences (United States of America), Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Academy of Sciences (NAS), State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS), American Geophysical Union (AGU), American Institute of Physics (AIP), National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), American Meteorological Society (AMS), Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS), and more.

And when the legitimate media doesn’t bother to cover Inhofe’s latest dishonesty, the parrothead lobby will take that as conspiracy against them, further vindicating their skepticism.

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They don’t have a response out yet, because real science takes time, but RealClimate always has the best science writing on the subject of Anthropogenic Climate Change. Keep an eye on them for a response to this book report, if they bother.