Thursday, August 18, 2011

Background On Rick Perry's Claim "The Earth Is Cooling"

It would be nice if the myth of global cooling was a fringe theory among even a few legitimate climate scientists. Unfortunately, it's not!


This video gives quick summary of the "global cooling" myth's origins and explains how became a myth circulated by profession climate skeptics.

There are a lot of climate myths out there —misconstrued facts and frank deceptions used to discredit good climate science.

But this myth is particularly interesting, because it's a very good example of how misinformation about climate change is promoted by professional climate change skeptics.

Influential, big-name talkers push the story. US Senator James Inhofe told the tale in Congress. Rush Limbaugh pushes the climate myth on his radio program and George Will advances myth in his newspaper column and on the Sunday morning "news?" program. Lots of average people listen to them.

And, consequently, at least some people, like Texas Gov. Rick Perry start to believe the myth is a legitimate alternative climate change theory. But, its not!

In reality, global cooling was never a broadly accepted Theory. It's reasonable to assume that a good chunk of Americans never heard about it at all. And global cooling never had the support of most climate scientists, let alone scientists in other disciplines, like biology and public health, which are linked to climate change in many important ways today.

We know all of this thanks to the work of two scientists, Thomas Peterson and William Connolly, and a journalist, John Fleck. In 2008, they published a detailed history of this myth in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. So that's another thing that makes the myth of global cooling stand out from the pack. Unlike a lot of myths, the path from fact to fiction is very well-documented.


This video gives quick summary of the email hacking "climategate" myth's origins and explains how a few passages were lifted from the hacked emails misrepresented out of context and circulated by profession climate skeptics.
And, what about Gov. Perry's "climategate" claim that, “there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data ... a group of scientists, have been, in some cases, found to be manipulating this information."

(See: "Global Warming Is A Trick" Climategate claims proven untrue - Times of London Retracts its story)

For details on Rick Perry recent climate skeptic claims and list of additional links on climate change and the Texas drought see: No End in Sight for Texas Drought

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