Think Progress Attacks NY Times For Hiring Climate ‘Denier’

By Julia A. Seymour

Climate Progress founding editor Joe Romm is furious with The New York Times for hiring a person he claims is an “extreme climate science denier.”

Romm was referring to Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal. His rant on Think Progress against the Times included Holocaust denialism and brought up the KKK.

On April 12, both newspapers announced that Stephens joined the Times as a columnist in part of the newspaper’s efforts to “further widen” the range of views it presents.

In his prior job at the Journal, Stephens criticized global warming “panic” and the religious fervor of environmentalists, wrote about Climategate and funding for alarmist science, among other things. The left-wing Huffington Post admitted that the Times defended Stephens by saying he’s not a “climate denialist.” Stephens told HuffPost he is a “climate agnostic.”…

Climate activist claims: ‘Global warming’ may ‘drive record election turnout’ – Voters face ‘unusually warm temperatures’

will-global-warming-help-drive-record-election-turnout-clipular-1

Think Progress climate activists Joe Romm, a former Clinton Administration official, is fingering “global warming” as the key driver to a potential 2016 “record election turnout.”

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expects unusually warm temperatures over most of the nation to continue through election day,” Romm wrote in a October 31 article titled “Will global warming help drive record election turnout?”

Romm continued: “Instead of seeing the kind of cold, harsh November weather that can keep some people home, most Americans who vote early or on election day will see near-ideal temps. That’s especially important since ‘nearly half of Americans live in precincts where long lines’ to vote were a problem in the 2012 election.

Romm leaves no doubt as to who climate change concerned voters should support. “With this weather projected to continue over the next week, you have no excuse not to get your vote in. And, as Al Gore has explained, there is also no excuse for voting for a third party — if you care about the climate crisis.”…

Warmist Joe Romm at ThinkProgress: Global Warming Caused Brexit

It only took four days after U.K. voters chose to leave the European Union for a liberal climate scientist and eco-activist to blame the whole event on — you guessed it — global warming.

Joe Romm, a climate scientist and writer for the liberal blog ThinkProgress, wrote an article Monday arguing the so-called “Brexit” and the rise of GOP candidate Donald Trump are driven by global warming.

“We’ve known for a while that there are scientific tipping points beyond which certain climate impacts — like the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet or the thawing of the carbon-rich permafrost — become unstoppable,” Romm wrote. “But it appears there may also be political tipping points, where certain climate impacts cause so much widespread harm simultaneously that they simply fragment the world.”

“In this fatally-fractured future, countries focus almost exclusively on the ever-worsening climate devastation to their country, destroying the possibility of collective action by the world to help those worst off,” he wrote.

Romm goes on to argue the Brexit movement was largely fueled by “scaremongering around the Syrian refugee crisis” — a crisis he says caused by global warming. Romm wrote:

The Syrian migrant crisis “had an outsized impact on the Brexit,” as NBC News political director Chuck Todd said Friday. You can see that in the pro-Brexit poster from the U.K. Independence Party (above) — which became a major advertising campaign of the referendum — featuring thousands of male refugees streaming from Croatia into Slovenia last October.

It bears repeating that a major 2015 study confirmed: “Human-caused climate change was a major trigger of Syria’s brutal civil war.” This study found that global warming made Syria’s 2006 to 2010 drought two to three times more likely. “While we’re not saying the drought caused the war,” the lead author explained. “We are saying that it certainly contributed to other factors — agricultural collapse and mass migration among them — that caused the uprising.”

And that mass migration ultimately fueled the mass refugee crisis of the last two years, a crisis the world has utterly failed to figure out how to handle.

Environmentalists and some scientists have tried to link the Syrian civil war to man-made global warming for years. The argument has been repeated by Democratic presidential candidates and even Secretary of State John Kerry as evidence for why the world needs to get serious about a warming climate.…

BUSTED: Claim of Greenland Warmest Temperature Record of 75°F Challenged By Data

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/theres-joe-romm-and-then-theres-the-facts/

By Paul Homewood

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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/15/3788651/greenland-record-globe-hottest-year/

Joe Romm has been up to his tricks again:

Last Thursday, Greenland’s capital hit 75°F, which was hotter than New York City. This was the highest temperature ever recorded there in June — in a country covered with enough ice to raise sea levels more than 20 feet.

It comes hot on the heels of the hottest May on record for the entire globe, according to NASA. As the map above shows, May temperature anomalies in parts of the Arctic and Antarctic were as high as 17°F (9.4°C) above the 1951-1980 average for the month.

Greenland in particular has been shockingly warm this spring. Here, for instance, is “land surface temperatures for April 2016 compared to the 2001–2010 average for the same month” from NASA:

 

Greenland

NASA reports that some parts of Greenland were 36°F (20°C) warmer than “normal” — and remember, in this map, the new “normal” is the 2001–2010 average, which means it already includes a century of human-caused warming.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/15/3788651/greenland-record-globe-hottest-year/

Romm’s ploy is straightforward:

  • Temperatures of 75F must be unheard of in a place like Greenland.
  • Ice sheets will surely melt quickly in such temperatures.

He reinforces his message like this:

Some might note a worrisome pattern, driven by ever-rising levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Joe gets his “record temperature” from the highly reliable Weather Underground. However, their weather records show maximum temperatures bouncing up and down during that day. Somehow, we are expected to believe that the temperature jumped up several degrees at ten to every hour!

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https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/BGGH/2016/6/9/DailyHistory.html?req_city=&req_state=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo=

It is evident that there are two recording stations at Nuuk. No serious meteorologist would declare a record  just based on one, when the other was so much different.

In any event, 75F (23.9C) is not even a record. According to DMI, the highest temperature recorded at Nuuk was 24.2C, back in July 1908.

As for his ridiculous map, supposedly showing Greenland temperatures 20C warmer than normal in April, it presumably has not occurred to him that there ARE NO WEATHER STATIONS IN THE INTERIOR OF GREENLAND.

The map comes from satellite observations from NASA, who comment:

This temperature anomaly map is based on data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Observed by satellites uniformly around the world, land surface temperatures (LSTs) are not the same as air temperatures. Instead, they reflect the heating of the

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry on ‘Climate Hustle’: ‘Entertaining’ – ‘Morano’s interview with me was really fun’

https://judithcurry.com/2016/05/01/climate-hustle/

Let me start by discussing my take on Marc Morano, and why I agreed to be interviewed for his movie.  I first heard of Marc Morano circa 2006, from Joe Romm.  Romm’s take on Morano was basically that of the climate ‘anti-Christ.’  I then put ClimateDepot on my list of blogs to monitor, to check up on what the ‘evil’ side in the climate debate was up to.  I slowly built up an understanding of what Morano was doing, and I didn’t regard all of it as negative.

At some point (probably around the time of Climategate) I found myself on the same email list as Marc Morano, and we exchanged a few emails on issues of common interest.  Circa 2010 (if my memory serves) I referred to Marc Morano as a ‘demagogue’ (I can’t find this anywhere on the internet).  Marc was offended, we discussed this on email, and I raised my concern about his attacks on individual climate scientists that included publishing their email addresses, etc.  We declared sort of a truce on this, and we agreed to point out to each other if we spotted inappropriate behaviors.

Subsequently, I’ve met Marc several times, and I have to say I like the guy.  He’s smart and he’s funny (he pokes fun at both sides), and as far as I can tell he is honest.  When he asked to interview me for the movie, I agreed to do it.  The interview itself was really fun.  I have no complaints about how I was portrayed in the movie.

I saw an earlier version of the film in November, prior to the Paris premiere.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but my initial reaction was relief that there were no goofy or incredible statements about the science.  I found the movie to be pretty entertaining and even interesting, especially the narratives developed around silly alarmist statements made by scientists and politicians.

I thought the selection of featured scientists was quite good.  It included some new faces that were quite effective – Caleb Rossiter, Robert Giegengack, Richard Tol, Daniel Botkin were especially good.

The budget for this was shoestring, I think it was less than $500K (somewhere I recall seeing a $20M budget for Merchants of Doubt movie, this may not be correct).   Financials for Merchants of Doubt movie: $192K at the box office, with an additional $114K from …

Warmist Joe Romm: ‘We Just Lived In The Hottest Year On Record’

OAA and NASA have announced that 2015 was by far the hottest year on record globally. In fact,NOAA reports that “2015 is Earth’s warmest year by widest margin on record.” 2015 set the record for setting records!

While global temperature records are normally measured in hundredths of degrees Fahrenheit, NOAA reports 2015 crushed the previous record just set in 2014 by nearly three tenths of a degree, or 0.29°F (0.16°C) above the previous record, which was set in 2014.

NOAA 2015

Canadian bridge splits due to extreme cold – ‘Closed indefinitely’

2016: Extreme cold causes Canadian bridge to split. 

2007: ‘Global Warming’ claimed to have caused Minnesota bridge collapse

http://www.torontosun.com/2016/01/10/bridge-on-trans-canada-highway-splits-amid-cold-weather

TORONTO – A northern Ontario bridge that is part of the Trans-Canada Highway has been closed indefinitely, police said on Sunday, after media reports it split because of extremely cold weather.

The Nipigon River Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge that opened in November, was closed because of “mechanical issues,” Ontario Provincial Police said. Twitter images showed a gap splitting the highway.

“My first thought was, Canada is cut in half,” Nipigon, Ontario, Mayor Richard Harvey told online news site TB News Watch.

 

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How cold weather could have played a role in the failure of the Nipigon Bridge – Jan. 11, 2016 – Ontario experienced a deep freeze. In Nipigon, the temperature went from -6.3 C on Saturday to -15.7 on Sunday. As well, the area experienced high wind gusts as the system bringing the cold weather rolled in…When it comes to the cold weather, bridges — typically comprised of steel cable and concrete — react just like anything else. The steel and concrete expand in warm weather and contract in cold. The cables of a cable-stayed bridge like the one in Nipigon are fasted from a main tower to the ends with bolts. In the cold, the steel in the cables would contract causing the bridge to want to uplift. But that’s what the bolts at the ends are for: to counter that. Though it’s unknown what happened, Green said that it could have been a combination of factors that made the perfect storm: cold weather could have compromised the bolts and the wind could have caused uplift. If the cables had iced, that could have compromised the bridge as well.

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Warmist v. Warmist: Romm slams David Roberts’ article for being ‘filled with inaccurate and misleading statements, historical revisionism, and a fatally flawed premise’

The Really Awful Truth About Climate Change

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/18/3644824/really-awful-truth-about-climate-change/

Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in a scene from the movie “The Awful Truth.” (AP Photo) So Vox ran a story Friday, “The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit” by former Grist columnist Dave Roberts. While I’m a longtime fan of Roberts, the piece is filled with inaccurate and misleading statements, historical revisionism, and a fatally flawed premise. The premised comes from an equally flawed commentary in Nature, “Policy: Climate advisers must maintain integrity” in which German analyst Oliver Geden argues that climate scientists (and others) have been “spreading false optimism,” about our chances of stabilizing below 2°C total global warming. Geden’s piece has drawn significant criticism from scientists on BuzzFeed, ClimateWire, and here, as Roberts notes. But Roberts asserts, “the heated reactions elicited by Geden’s piece do show that he’s on to something.” Dave, Dave, Dave, if heated reactions proved someone is “on to something,” then I guess Fox News is fair and balanced after all…. So what is “The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit”? Roberts asserts that no one wants to admit “The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit.” No. And by “no” I mean that, setting aside the vagueness of the word “miracles,” lots of people have been saying in recent years that humanity faces some awful shit if we don’t don’t adopt super-aggressive action ASAP. But they have not been saying it’s scientifically hopeless or requires religious miracles — since that isn’t true, though it seems to be what Geden and Roberts want them to be saying. No, the really awful truth about climate change is that while climate scientists, the International Energy Agency, and many others have been increasingly blunt about how dire our situation is — and what needs to be done ASAP to avoid catastrophe — much of the so-called intelligentsia keep ignoring them. The most recent example comes in a report out earlier this month from 70 leading climate experts (click here). The parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (aka the world’s leading nations) set up a “structured expert dialogue” from 2013 to 2015 to review the adequacy of the 2°C target. Early this month, the experts reported back. Thoughtfully, they simplified their key conclusions into 10 core messages. Among them: Message …