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Heartland Institute says there isn’t any warming
The Heartland Institute tells us that there is not, and cannot be, a climate crisis, because for most of the past 12,000 years the climate was warmer than it is today. A recent (October 5) posting by James Taylor, president of the Institute, states as follows (full text; fair use claimed):
CLIMATE CHANGE: The so-called climate crisis is a sham
There cannot be a climate crisis when temperatures are unusually cool.
- Scientists have documented, and even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has admitted, that temperatures were warmer than today throughout most of the time period that human civilization has existed.
- Temperatures would have to keep warming at their present pace for at least another century or two before we reach temperatures that were common during early human civilization.
- There can be no climate crisis – based on the notion of dangerously high temperatures – when humans have thrived in temperatures much warmer than today for most of the last 12,000 years.
None of this is true. Here is a graph of climate change in the past 12,000 years; note the value for 2016, on the right-hand axis of the main figure, as well as the rapid rise over the past century shown in the inset, which also shows the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. I have seen Heartland’s claim before, accompanied by graphs such as the one below, but without the insert and recent date, thus effectively suppressing everything that’s happened in the last century:
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‘God intended it as a disposable planet’: meet the US pastor preaching climate change denial
Every so often you come across a piece of writing so extraordinary that you cannot help but share it. One such piece is a sermon on global warming by American pastor John MacArthur. Full of beautifully constructed rhetorical flourishes, it is forcefully delivered by an experienced and impassioned preacher to a large and appreciative audience.
For me, as a man of science, it is the most complete compilation of unsound arguments, factual errors and misleading analogies as I have seen in discussions of this subject. But it’s important because climate change is a big election issue this November in the US, where there is a growing movement of evangelical Christians who deny its existence, while Joe Biden promises a “clean air revolution”.
Read more: Faith and politics mix to drive evangelical Christians’ climate change denial
The minister of the COVID-denying, law-defying Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California – which has encouraged worshippers to congregate as normal despite state COVID-19 restrictions – MacArthur is an impressive figure whose Study Bible has sold almost 2 million copies.
He regards the infallibility of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as essential to his faith, and his sermon about global warming can only be understood in that context. MacArthur’s rejection of the science is shared by other major US ministries and organisations such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International and the Discovery Institute.
In this sermon, MacArthur paraphrases “a scientist at Cal Tech” (except not a scientist at all, but the novelist Michael Crichton, best known for Jurassic Park), as saying in a lecture:
Consensus science is the first refuge of scoundrels … invoked only in situations where there is a political, social, financial agenda but no scientific support.
The reverend has the most serious reasons possible for rejecting the scientific consensus concerning the age of the Earth, the origins of humankind, the history and prehistory of the ancient near East and the peopling of continents: it is totally incompatible with the Genesis account of creation, Adam and Eve, the flood and the dispersion of peoples from the Tower of Babel.
Error, denial and misunderstanding
As for global warming itself, the reverend channels standard climate change denial, but all his arguments are unsound and have been convincingly refuted to the satisfaction of an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists (see in-depth discussion at Skeptical Science). He understates the amount of global warming, incorrectly describes the full record as dating back only 30 years, and cites the Little Ice Age as evidence that the changes currently taking place are natural. There’s more:
Here’s the key, friends, this is the real deal. Legitimate science recognises a close correlation between sunspots and climate change … The sun is the source of temperature changes because of its infrared variations. … There is absolutely no evidence that CO₂ contributes to warming. On the contrary the opposite is true. Warming produces CO₂ … It’s the other way round.
Here we have a collection of half-truths and misunderstandings, typical of denialists claiming to represent “legitimate science”. As the graph below shows, the 11-year sunspot cycle is a minor deviation, and the temperature increase since 1980 has occurred despite the fact that over that period the amount of solar energy falling on Earth has gone down slightly. Incidentally, this solar energy input is concentrated mainly in the visible, not the infrared, region of the spectrum, and it is the roughly balancing heat outflow from the Earth that is in the infrared.
MacArthur offers a false dichotomy between saying that CO₂ warms the oceans, and warmer oceans release more CO₂. Unfortunately, both these statements are true. There is a positive feedback loop: human-released CO₂ is the primary driver, but its effect is amplified by the fact that yet more CO₂ is then released from non-human sources. Regarding CO₂ itself, MacArthur seems to be even more confused:
By the way, plants produce CO₂. What man produces is marginal … Industry doesn’t affect CO₂ in the environment or atmosphere.
Plants do produce CO₂ but they absorb more than they emit. However, when it comes to humans, their activity may cause only a small imbalance each year between CO₂ emission and natural uptake, but this imbalance is cumulative. CO₂ levels are now 50% above pre-industrial, and subtle atomic differences clearly show that fossil fuel is the source. But according to MacArthur, “There is no scientific reason to believe that ice caps are melting”.
Despite the Arctic Monitoring and Assement Programme’s video on this subject, the reverend does not think that the evidence for ice-cap melting is scientific, and that other factors are at play:
This is all political [and] financial agendas, class warfare, class envy … By the way, US$100 billion has been spent to make a case for global warming … driven by the socialist mentality … even some of the feminist mentality that resents male success.
All is now clear. Talk of global warming is part of a politically motivated conspiracy. But US$100 billion? That’s 600 years’ worth of all federal climate research spending. Clearly, those pesky socialists and feminists are formidable fundraisers. However, none of this matters because environmentalism is fundamentally misplaced. As MacArthur puts it, citing Revelation and the integrity of scripture:
God intended us to use this planet, to fill this planet for the benefit of man. Never was it intended to be a permanent planet. It is a disposable planet. Christians ought to know that.
And that is a statement that would leave anybody who cares about this world speechless.
This piece first appeared in The Conversation, where it has had over 300,000 reads. I thank my editor there, Jane Wright, for many helpful suggestions.
Science matters because it works (but it’s not quite that simple)
Reblogged from The Logic of Science, but with this comment: No one would disagree with these claims on behalf of science, and and that’s the problem.
The climate change denialists, like the smoking science denialists before them, pretend that the science is unsettled. The creationists prattle of “creation science” and “flood geology”. The extremely able and intelligent US Vice President, pandering to his creationist base, did not claim to be anti-science. On the contrary, he used the very fact of a major scientific discovery (Sahelanthropus, evolution, and the word “theory”; what Mike Pence really said) to blur the distinction between the established core and the fast-changing frontiers. And if we are to effectively defend science, we need to understand the emotional appeal of the ideology that leads to the rejection of vaccination, medicines, and GMOs, and to the prejudging of complex arguments in such cases as fracking and nuclear power.*
We need to think very carefully about tactics. If we seem to be saying anything like “Science is a good thing, therefore you should trust the scientists”, we are playing into the hands of our enemies. We are right to demonstrate and protest when science is denied, or ignored, or muzzled. And yet people (that’s all of us) believe what they want to believe. The task then is, how to persuade people to want to believe in the evidence?
*This last comment cuts both ways, of course
Why should you support science? Because it works! It’s crazy to me that I even have to say that, but this is where we are as a society. Various forms and degrees of science denial are running rampant throughout our culture, and attacks on science are being disseminated from the highest levels. Indeed, it has gotten to the point that hundreds of thousands of scientists and science enthusiasts like myself feel compelled to take to the streets to march for science and remind everyone of the fundamental fact that science works and is unparalleled in its ability to inform us about reality and improve our world.
Image via the CDC
Just look around you. Everything that you see was brought to you by science. The batteries that power your electronic devices are a result of scientific advances in chemistry, as are the plastics that make up seemingly everything in our…
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Reality imitates satire; smoking, climate change, and EPA chief Scott Pruitt
Jim (seated) consults Sir Humphrey
Wishing, as I recall, to evade the scientific consensus on smoking and lung cancer, Yes Minister‘s Jim Hacker turned for advice to his Civil Servant Sir Humphrey Appleby. The conversaton went something like this (I would be glad of a link to the exact transcript):
Sir Humphrey: Say the scientists disagree. Say that more research is needed.
Jim: But I thought the science was settled …
Sir Humphrey: Those scientists are always disagreeing about something, and there is always a need for more research.
Now this, from Science magazine’s online website: Read the rest of this entry
Yes, there is a strong consensus on climate change
I have been corresponding about these matters with one of the authors (Dana Nuccitelli) of the lead paper on the subject ( Cook et al. 2013 “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature“) for some years.
Arctic Sea Ice Volume, from Polar Science Center (http://psc.apl.uw.edu/)
Climate change denial shares many interesting features of evolution denial. Misrepresentation of data, accusations of fraud (remember Climategate?), allegations of non-existent scientific disagreement, reporting on genuine scientific debates about rates and mechanisms as if they were fundamental disagreements of principle, and repeated attempts (especially in the US, at state level) to pass laws requiring schools to “teach the controversy”. In the US, although not as far as I know in the UK, there is strong overlap between evolution denial and climate change denial, both being linked to the Evangelical Right that has more or less captured the Republican Party. In both cases, there are Orwellian mislabellings. Thus the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation is dedicated to the unrestricted exploitation of the planet’s resources, while Evolution News and Views consists of nothing but attacks on the science that supports evolution. We also have the endless and shameless repetition of blatant falsehoods. Creationists keep on telling us that evolution has never been observed, that the fossil record is too sparse to be interpreted, and that there is a “missing link” between humans and their common ancestors with other apes. Climate change deniers seem oblivious to the massive loss of Arctic ice, while trumpeting every intermittent uptick as a major recovery, and use the then unique 1998 spike (exceeded several times since) as if it were an appropriate baseline. Other climate denial falsehoods that refuse to go away include the allegations (repeated on UK TV Channel 4 and elsewhere) that volcanoes emit more carbon dioxide than humans (the reverse is true, by a factor of over 100), and that present warming is due to Milankovich cycles (no; it is much too fast for that). Both have their own glossy websites, and setting up counters to these (such as talkorigins and pandasthumb for evolution, and Skeptical Science for climatology) is a major cottage industry.
Climate change denialists, however, take quote mining and misattribution to a whole new level. Thus denialists regularly accuse climate scientists of having switched from talking about global warming to talking about climate change or vice versa because the case for warming was so weak or because global warming sounds more frightening (versions vary). In reality, it was the denialist Frank Luntz who proposed the change in vocabulary, in an internal thinktank memo leaked to Mother Jones:
It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation ” instead of preservation. “Climate change’’ is less frightening than “global warming”
(In this memo, Luntz shows mastery of how to use words for effect; we would do well to study his methods closely.) And while both kinds of denialists accuse the scientists they are attacking of wholesale fraud, at least the evolution denialists do have one real case they can cite (Piltdown Man), while despite half a dozen investigations in two continents into alleged misconduct, the climate denialists have none.
There are two other important differences. One is scale of funding. The funding available to promote climate change denial is major, large enough to finance attempts to set up an entire bogus curriculum. The other is potential impact. If large numbers of people persist in a creationist view of reality, remaining obstinately misinformed about what kind of universe we inhabit and what kind of creatures we are, that is an enormous pity but has no obvious further implications. But if large numbers of voters, especially in the US, persist in denying our influence on climate, the implications for policy making are very serious indeed.
Even if you have never paid any real attention to the climate change “debate,” you have probably seen someone say that, “97% of climatologists agree that we are causing climate change.” This is a number that I have personally cited on numerous occasions, and it is a number that is highly contested by the climate change deniers. Indeed, I rarely mention the consensus without people responding by adamantly proclaiming that the 97% number is a myth, and the study that produced it (Cook et al. 2013) has been debunked. Therefore, in this post, I want to deal with the consensus on climate change from several angles. First, I want to focus on the prominent Cook et al. study and explain what the authors actually did, what they found, and why their study was robust. I also want to deal with some of the common criticisms of their study. Finally, I…
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Anti-Creationists need to think about tactics
By Paul Braterman and Mark Edon. This piece first appeared on November 30, 2012, on the BCSE website.
We write here as individual non-believers in support of the “accommodationist” position taken by the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE), on whose committee both of us serve. We consider that there are over-riding tactical and strategic reasons for this position. As non-believers defending science, we are being unreasonable if we criticise the godly for failing to combat Creationism, and then, for fear of ideological impurity, refuse to link arms with them when they do.
Followers of the political & religious controversy surrounding evolution [1] will be aware of a subsidiary debate amongst those who do accept modern science, that encompasses such issues as; “Is it possible to believe in god and accept the science?”, “Should the objective of the debate be the acceptance of science or the rejection of god?” and “What is the best way to get people to accept the science?”
The British Centre for Science Education (BCSE), comprising volunteers from science, education and business backgrounds, is a single purpose organisation. Our objective, shared by our members regardless of their religious position, is to keep Creationism out of UK schools. The simple fact is that the Government (in its policy statements at least), other mainstream political parties in the UK, the established Church and other mainstream churches all agree on this. In the UK, only a minority of self-identified Christians think that creationism should be taught, while Young Earth creationists complain that the vast majority of evangelicals reject their doctrine.
The current Coalition Government Free School and Academy programs have given Creationists in the UK opportunities that they had never previously dreamt of and, through what we sincerely hope is mere oversight, July 2012 saw the first crypto-Creationist free school applications approved. They will be getting tax payers’ money to teach children, at the expense of the local authority education budget, although the local authority will have no control over them and at this stage no-one knows what they will teach.
The BCSE wants to campaign against Creationism in a way that unites the widest possible range of opinion and so we don’t campaign for or against any of the following; atheism, religion, faith schools, free schools or academies, although many members and committee members hold strong views on many of these issues.
If you look at the activities of Creationists here in the UK you can see that their main campaigning tactic is to present themselves as Christians making perfectly reasonable requests about education policy, all in the spirit of fairness, whilst being attacked by militant atheists.
So it is in these circumstances that the BCSE campaigns against Creationism with all and any who will agree with us on this issue, regardless of any disagreement on other issues. This means we are neutral on matters of religion and we are glad to work with the religious and non-religious alike. The CrISIS campaign, in which we took part last year, which culminated in a letter to Michael Gove signed by the National Secular Society, Richard Dawkins, Jim Al-Khalili, Susan Blackmore, Andrew Colman, David Colquhoun, Christopher French, Adam Hart -Davis, Julian Huppert MP, The Rev Canon Theologian David Jennings, Steve Jones, Dr Stephen Law, Clifford Longley, the Rev Michael Roberts, Simon Singh MBE, Canon Theologian Keith Ward, and education lecturer James D. Williams, exemplifies this, as did a similarly broad-based subsequent campaign, which we supported, by the British Humanist Association.
BCSE’s experience of working with representatives of the clear majority of the religious population in the UK that accept the science, and our knowledge that UK Creationists unremittingly promote an “Atheists versus Christians” narrative during recruitment and campaigning, has lead us to often repeat the fact that the majority of religious people have no problem with the science.
These two aspects of what we do: 1) working with the religious and non-religious alike, 2) pointing out that accepting the science is fine with the established church and the large majority of the religious, are far from protecting us against criticism.
Creationists still accuse us of promoting an atheistic ideology, and even level this charge against ordained ministers and other committed believers amongst our members but then they do the same to that vast majority of Christians who accept the science, and even the (outgoing) Archbishop of Canterbury is not spared. Some nonbelievers label us “accommodationists” for working with the religious and for not arguing against the existence of god, claiming that because religion is correlated with Creationism the only way to counter Creationism is to campaign against religion. For want of a better label, we will refer to nonbelievers in this camp as “anti-theists”, in the belief that many already call themselves this and that it doesn’t offend or mislead. This seems less clumsy than “anti-accommodationists”. If a better label exists we will happily adopt it. Whilst we are on the subject of labels, we reserve the term “Creationists” for those who deny the well-established science of evolution and common descent, and, in many cases, of an ancient earth and even more ancient Universe. This is quite different from the philosophical creationism that accepts these realities, but sees them as, ultimately, the work of a deity. Some who should know better seem unsure of the difference between these positions and thereby play into the hands of the enemies of reason.
Unfortunately, anti-theists or those who can be labelled as such, when campaigning against Creationism, are vulnerable to the line invariably taken by Creationists that they are just Atheists persecuting Christians. Thus our good friend Richy Thomson, BHAFaithSchools and Education campaigner, found himself outmanoeuvred in a radio phone-in discussion of a proposed Creationist school in Sheffield, when the advocate of Creationism change the terms of debate by pointing out that his opponent was against faith schools and religion in general. Similarly, when a Creationist on Radio Five was asked to say if he wanted Creationism taught in science classes or not, he ignored the question and claimed that the BHA was prejudiced when evaluating the scientific evidence and wanted to restrict the rights of the religious. The correct response would be to point out that the large majority of religious people think that Creationism is silly too, perhaps with some examples but again the point at issue was lost. While only a very tiny minority of people are pushing Creationism into UK schools, they create the illusion of broad support by such muddling of issues.
It is worth stating plainly here that the BCSE neither calls for the religious to give up their faith (indeed, how could it, given the range of opinions in its membership?) nor for the anti-theists to stop campaigning against it.
It seems to us that the Creationists adopt the “Atheist versus Christians” tactic at every available opportunity for two good reasons.
First of all, the conflict and persecution narrative aids recruitment and engenders zeal, especially among the many potential recruits who are at difficult points in their own lives. Creationist organisers know that being part of a valiant band struggling against the odds offers both a sense of belonging and the chance for the leaders to prove their honesty and intelligence by accurately predicting ridicule and rudeness from people outside the group. In this way the weirder the claims, the stronger the ridicule, and the more strongly members are driven into the group. This is why you find so many Creationist groups publicising the fact of their opponents calling them names.
Secondly, and more at issue here, the conflict narrative very often means the public debate can be swiftly moved away from “Creationism is daft” to genuine Atheist versus Christian issues such as faith schools. Creationists know that in such debates they are part of a much larger and more respectable group and readily identify themselves as simply “Christians”.
So how should we proceed?
There seems to be agreement amongst anti-theists and accommodationists that some Creationists can be won over to accept the science, although both sides currently see this as a rare event and base their claims upon anecdotes [2]. Is loss of faith or is accommodation of science with religious belief the reason for such changes of mind? Well, the anecdotes suggest both are possible paths that individuals do travel. However we still have no quantitative data on the reasons why, despite this obviously being of great interest to all.
A recent paper in Evolution Education and Outreach by Southcott and Downie [3] does give us some hints at data on this topic, but not much more than a reason for more research.
The data relates to biology students at GlasgowUniversity between 1987 and 2011 who rejected evolution. Here are a few highlights but please go and read the thing for yourselves if you are interested.
First of all things that anti-theists and accommodationists agree on:
From the abstract.
“Evolution rejection was closely related to accepting a religion-based alternative, whereas acceptance was related to finding the evidence convincing. Although many religious students accepted evolution, 50% of Islamic students were rejecters, compared to 25% of Christians.”
Anti-theists seem to go on from this to deduce that as Creationism comes from religion you must counter religious belief to counter Creationism. This simply does not follow.
“A question testing acceptance of several scientific propositions showed no evidence that evolution rejecters were generally more skeptical of science than accepters.”
That is surprising, although it could be that evolution rejecters were simply unaware of the full implications of their position. Moving on.
“A breakdown of evolution into three components (human origins, macroevolution, and microevolution) found that some evolution rejecters accepted some components, with microevolution having the highest acceptance and human origins the lowest. These findings are discussed in terms of strategies for evolution education and the phenomenon of evolution rejection worldwide.”
This reflects the common Creationist tactics of claiming to accept micro evolution so as to avoid the appearance of rejecting all evidence out of hand.
Now some highlights from the rest of the paper. Rejection of evolution at GlasgowUniversity is running at between 3.9% and 4.4% in samples taken irregularly between 1987 and 2011 (they used some data from previous studies for comparison) and from the small numbers available it seems that Islamic students are about twice as likely as Christian students to reject evolution.
The overall level of students with a religion was down over the various study years and the association of religion with evolution denial strengthened.
This next bit made us sit up and pay attention (our emphasis);
“All level 4 [now in their final year at uni] rejectors belonged to “low evolution” degree programs. It is clear that for most of them, no amount of scientific evidence would overcome their beliefs, a more entrenched position even than that taken by level 1 rejecters.” (“Low evolution” here describes courses such as psychology or pharmacology, as opposed to, say, zoology.)
So it would appear that logical and evidence based argument is futile with these folks.
This next bit was also very interesting.
“By level 4, our evolution rejection sample size was very small, but the importance of a belief precluding evolution remained the main factor. Our sample size for switching from rejection to acceptance was also small (n=7), but it is fascinating that these students were less affected by scientific evidence than by a realization that evolution and their religious beliefs were not in conflict.”
So for these students in Glasgow, reaching some kind of personal accommodation between the science and their faith was the path to accepting evolution.
This next finding fits in with recent survey findings for the UK population as a whole.
“It is worth emphasizing that, although evolution rejection was strongly associated with holding a religious belief, the majority of believers accepted evolution.”
These are the results of just a few surveys in one university and more research will be required to inform appropriate educational strategies.
In the meantime we have a political battle on our hands and this article lays out the reasons why opponents of Creationism in publicly funded schools in the UK should think carefully about their tactics.
In summary, the reasons for even the most dedicated opponents of religion to adopt accommodationism in the political fight against Creationism are twofold.
- Tactical advantage gained by appealing to a huge majority support by including the religious non Creationists.
- Strategic advantage as the Creationists are denied one of their main recruitment and retention tactics and we give ourselves the best chance of reducing their hardcore support.
Anti-theist groups need no permission from us to continue their own wider campaigns and agendas but they should seriously consider working with an accommodationist umbrella group like the BCSE to maximise their political effectiveness in this particular fight.
As for the situation at the time of writing, BCSE strongly supports the BHA campaign of protest against the recent decision to allow Creationist groups to open Free Schools, while (in accord with the spirit of this article) drawing attention to the fact that the issue here is not religion versus irreligion, but science versus the denial of science.
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1 but which on examination includes the denial of such vast swathes of modern science including physics, earth sciences and cosmology as they all speak to an old earth, plus so many other related disciplines, that one might as well say that such deniers simply reject science.
2 See Richard Dawkins converts corner for examples of loss of faith and the BCSE community forum for examples of both kinds.
3 Southcott, R. & Downie, J., Evolution and Religion: Attitudes of Scottish Bioscience Students to the Teaching of Evolutionary Biology, Evolution: Education and Outreach, Springer New York, 1936-6426, pp. 1-11, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12052-012-0419-9 , Doi: 10.1007/s12052-012-0419-9
Primate's Progress 