< That Weather Channel guy pipes up again / >

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.A story at Politico, written by Erika Lovley and titled "Scientists Urge Caution on Global Warming," requires the kind of close analysis that's done with a hammer and chisel — so that the huge holes beneath it can become more visible.

Summary: According to Lovley, a nonspecific number of "climate change skeptics" in Washington D.C. have begun to notice "a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings" to make carbon limits in the U.S. a "shaky" move.

But on closer read, the nonspecific number of skeptics is quite specific: "both senators from Oklahoma, Republicans Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe," along with "Marc Morano, communications director for the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee."

Which would be, by my count, three people.

Erika Lovley

And what about the "growing accumulation of...science and other findings" — how many scientists are we talking about there? "Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D’Aleo and other scientists" and "Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Michaels."

Which would be, by my count, two people.

(Forget the "other scientists" part, just like "other findings" earlier; that's just sloppy, lazy writing. Identify it, or delete it.)

And now, watch closely as Lovley provides depth and detail to this deeply flawed Journalism 101 exercise:

Armed with statistics from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climate Data Center, D’Aleo reported in the 2009 Old Farmer’s Almanac that the U.S. annual mean temperature has fluctuated for decades and has only risen 0.21 degrees since 1930 — which he says is caused by fluctuating solar activity levels and ocean temperatures, not carbon emissions. Data from the same source shows that during five of the past seven decades, including this one, average U.S. temperatures have gone down. And the almanac predicted that the next year will see a period of cooling.

Let's not even discuss the part about D'Aleo publishing his findings in the Old Farmer's Almanac, rather than, say, a refereed and respected science journal employing strict peer reviews of blind submissions and verification of source studies. What's more important is the glaring presence of huge ideological blinders limiting both D'Aleo's and Lovley's views to one place on the planet: the United States. For them, and for far too many Americans, the U.S. is the planet. Beyond its shores, nothing.

It's kind of like The Truman Show or Pleasantville, where the prospect of the world being something more than just here has never occurred to anyone before.

Joseph D'Aleo

“We’re worried that people are too focused on carbon dioxide as the culprit,” D’Aleo continues in the Lovley piece. “Recent warming has stopped since 1998, and we want to stop draconian measures that will hurt already spiraling downward economics. We’re environmentalists and conservationists at heart, but we don’t think that carbon is responsible for hurricanes.”

Hmm... and where do hurricanes occur? Caribbean islands, Mexico, and.. oh, right, the United States! No matter what D'Aleo says or Lovley chooses to quote, the myopia is omnipresent.

It's really too bad about Mr. D'Aleo. He's got what appears to be an impressive resumé, and he could probably do a lot of good with those credentials and that experience. But if nothing else, he might at least disassociate himself from the Weather Channel, where his own argument is countered.

As for Ms. Lovley, it could just be that in her quest to appear objective (impossible, but still the ideological gold standard for journalism), she's going overboard by writing as generally as possible and not asking for, or including, specifics. This might change with time and experience.


Meanwhile, if these fine people could stop acting like draft horses with their snouts pointed at the road and blinders keeping them from getting spooked, and look beyond themselves, their ideologies, their country, their continent, their hemisphere, they might see that a lot of really bad shit is happening to a whole lot of people and animals and fish and plants and trees outside the United States — and all of it due to steadily rising overall temperatures.

As in, like, the cumulative mean, the kind that's used in science.
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