Newsweek Flubs the Facts Around Global Warming (UPDATED)
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 08.14.07
Though its intentions were sound — presumably attempting to shine a light on global warming deniers and their funding resources — Newsweek made several significant mistakes and used outdated science in its cover story last week. According to John Christy and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, the story erred in its portrayal of satellite collected global climate data — a dataset that they maintain — by misrepresenting a January 2000 report from the National Academy of Sciences.
"One of the more egregious errors in the Newsweek article is the misrepresentation of the satellite data relative to a January 2000 report from the National Academy of Sciences. That report did not 'skewer' the satellite data, as the Newsweek article contends. Instead, it found that the apparent disagreement between surface temperature records and the satellite record was not so significant as to invalidate either dataset," said Christy, who helped write the 2000 NAS report.
In addition to erroneously interpreting other results as indicative of the satellite data being wrong and the surface data right — a mistake the UA scientists attribute to the writers' lack of understanding of the scientific process' nuances — the Newsweek story wrongly stated that the satellite data didn't show signs of warming at the time the research was published.
"The other Newsweek error, which has unfortunately been widely repeated, is that the satellite data were showing no warming at the time that research was published," Christy said. "That is not correct. By 2000 the satellite temperature dataset was clearly showing a long-term global warming trend, albeit a trend that was slightly less than the warming seen in surface data. That is still true today."
Oops. As Spencer, a research scientist at the Earth System Science Center, put it: "It is troubling that a major news organization devoting significant resources to a story about an important environmental issue would choose to cite data from seven years ago rather than current data, and would still get it wrong."
UPDATE: As John Laumer, one of our writers, noted in the comments, Roy Spencer has long been a prominent climate skeptic. John Christy, though also considered to be one, did help draft a statement by the American Geophysical Union in late 2003 concluding that "natural influences alone cannot explain the rapid increase in surface temperatures..."
We would thus caution readers to take their criticisms with a grain of salt (as will we) and to take Newsweek's article in good standing nonetheless.
Via ::Mongabay News:
Scientists: Newsweek Erred in Global Warming Coverage (news website)
See also: ::2007 According to Jeff McIntire-Strasburg: Mainstream Green, ::In the Media this Week: Global Warming, ::Green Media: Environmental News Network
Via sourcewatch::Dr. Roy..Spencer is a prominent global warming skeptic. Since February 2004 he has been a columnist for TCS Daily writing over forty columns, almost entirely on the the topic of global warming.
While generally considered a climate skeptic, John R. Christy was a co-drafter of the American Geophysical Union's December 2003 position statement on climate change, which concludes that:
"Human activities are increasingly altering Earth's climate, and that natural influences alone cannot explain the rapid increase in surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century."
If you check RealClimate you will get a sense the political importance of this particular topic to the critiques of Al Gore's film made by a host of deniers, many based on an alleged "misinterpretation" of data by Spencer. I would suggest not being too hard on Newsweek. There is more here than meets they eye.
Whether or not humans have effected global warming is moot. The world is warming and there's not much we can do about it in the near future.
I say, accept it, go with it, and learn to adapt. Things will sort themselves out.