http://youtu.be/8hZQaC3GPyQ
Straw man arguments are the creationists’ bread and butter. They make the claim that evolutionary science makes a prediction, which it doesn’t, and so since this prediction doesn’t happen, it means that evolution cannot be true. (I have often wandered how much of it is genuine stupidity and how much is cynically playing to a stupid audience.) Of course biologists have had a field day laughing at this silliness for some time.
But another group of science deniers have been using the exact same tactic: climate change denialists.
As I wrote a post recently about the hilarious Fox “News” lies on climate, I got a commentator making the following objections:
In fact, Arctic sea ice had just experienced a return to the 1979-2000 average extent prior to this summer’s low, an indicator at odds with the idea of rapid climate change. And it appears to be doing the same as we speak this winter: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_i…
Any particular reason why you leave out this critical detail?
He also attached an image. This one.
As I explained to him that the image was from November, more recent than the Fox “News” article in question, and besides, increased ice in winter did not negate climate change (da!), he came back rather testily:
Time to get yourself fitted with glasses? The date at the top left shows the photo was from yesterday, 12/31/12, [funny, it actually says Nov 2012-NoCrossNoCrescent] not from the article you strangely decided to link to. My link is as current as it gets. If the ‘fullness of data fits well with overall rising arctic temperature’, how do you explain yesterday’s graph for the Daily Sea Ice Extent Time Series showing the current ice extent meeting the ’07-’08 line when everyone is saying the Arctic is melting faster than ever? And you notice how last year at this time the 2012 line might have been a bit higher but was flattening out http://i49.tinypic.com/34dgdhe… , yet right now it is aiming upward? How well is this going to work out for you if it keeps trending upward?
Hallelujah! It is winter! We are getting ICE!
I tried to explain:
This is not as a difficult a problem as you make it out to be. The impact of climate change is most dominant in the arctic in the summer. And for a simple reason: in the winter it is mostly dark up there so there are no sun rays to trap, what CO2 does best. So in the winter ice levels go back to about what they were the previous winter. In the summer, on the other hand, they recede to unprecedented levels. Why is this so hard?
The response:
Climate happens night & day, winter & summer, rain & dry, in case you haven’t noticed. Correspondingly, why is it hard to understand that global warming predictions for an ice-free Arctic aren’t going to happen if the summer melt cannot erase the winter freeze-up? If an ‘unprecedented’ melt fails to happen this summer, preceded with the distinct possibility of a larger freeze this winter, then what? Now you have more ice up there, not less.
Are you sure it is a good idea on your part to cherry-pick out half of a season just to bolster a point about this summer’s ice breakup, which scientists suggest was significantly affected by the August cyclone? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com…
To which my co-blogger Smildon’s Retreat responded:
Climate DOES NOT happen night and day, winter and summer, rain and dry. Climate does not equal weather.
You’re argument is the same as “It snowed today, therefore global warming is false.”
Climate is the average conditions over a large area and a long time period. It doesn’t matter what happens today, or this week, or even this year. What does matter are things like: out of the 12 warmest years on record, all but one (1998) are in the 2000s. Out of the 20 warmest years on record, every single one is between 1987 and present.
What happens to an ice pack in one year is a refutation of global warming, even if it increased in size to pre-1950 levels.
For example, look here: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/…
The winter of 2012 was higher than the summer of 2007, but only barely. The summer of 2012 had the smallest area of arctic ice by almost 1000 square kilometers since… well since we’ve been keeping track.
You’ll also note that the arctic ice has NOT returned “average” (though you may be referring to ‘sea ice’ while I’m referring to the actual arctic ice pack), but is still over 2000 square kilometers smaller than the average TREND predicts it should be.
In other words, our denialist friend thinks climate change should mean we should have less ice year round. As it happens, we get about the same amount in the winter but less and less every year in the summer. THAT is actually what science predicts (see above). What he said was a classic straw man fallacy, just like the crocoduck.
And incidentally if you follow his link about the arctic cyclone, you get this:
On 2 August 2012 a dramatic storm formed over Siberia, moved into the Arctic, and died in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago on 14 August. During its lifetime its central pressure dropped to 966 hPa, leading it to be dubbed ‘The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012’. This cyclone occurred during a period when the sea ice extent was on the way to reaching a new satellite-era low, and its intense behavior was related to baroclinicity and a tropopause polar vortex. The pressure of the storm was the lowest of all Arctic August storms over our record starting in 1979, and the system was also the most extreme when a combination of key cyclone properties was considered. Even though, climatologically, summer is a ‘quiet’ time in the Arctic, when compared withall Arctic storms across the period it came in as the 13th most extreme storm, warranting the attribution of ‘Great’. [Emphasis added-NoCrossNoCrescent]
The cyclone occured “during a period when the sea ice extent was on the way to reaching a new satellite-era low”. It did not CAUSE the ice to reach the new low! So much for our friend’s reading skills.
This is another similarity between creationists and climate science denialists: they have next to no literature of their own, yet they try to misuse other people’s publications through spin.
In the meantime, back in the real world…
This is from 2007. Average annual arctic ice levels have gone further down since.
UPDATE:
As I was posting this the scinece denier made another comment on my last thread, that made me think of even more similarities between climate change deniers and creationist:
1. Use of sciency sounding terms to make themselves sound legitimate, even though they don’t fully understand the implications of what they are saying. Our climate denying thinks the words “baroclinicity” and “tropopause polar vortex” in the article he linked to vindicate him, without explaining how;
And
2. Changing the subeject as fast as possible. If you tell a creationist about the evolution of the eye she/he will immediately jump to the ear, and from that to hemoglobin, etc. Same with our friend: jumping from arctic ice to climate in Texas to IPCC predictions.
