Global warming a hoax? No, the hoax was the claim that there was a study that said global warming is a hoax.
4. GLOBAL WARMING HOAX: OR WAS IT JUST A HOAX OF A HOAX?
There was a wild scramble on Wednesday about the death of the manmade global warming theory, except the authors didn’t exist, nor their institution, nor the journal. It took two minutes to find this out, so what was the purpose? Just a prank?
What was it?
Nature reports the hoax site, looking like the website of a research journal, took the article down (that’s the link to the article; it’s gone, as you can see. The hoax included a purported article and a purported editorial from the journal.
But nothing checked out. The journal doesn’t exist. The researchers probably are bogus, too, nor does their purported institution/department exist.
Rush Limbaugh fell for it, though, as did several others who profess to be skeptical of global warming.
Certainly a hoax — but by whom? For what purpose?
In the meantime, junk science purveyor Steven Milloy claims that it was the skeptics of global warming who smoked out the hoax, not the many scientists who immediately smelled fishiness. Does he suggest the name of even one warming “skeptic” who called it? No.
Did Limbaugh apologize yet? Do you think he’ll be more skeptical next time?
Update, November 11, 2007: Nature interviews the hoax creator and perpetrator. Explanation, excerpt, and links to the article.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Even if scientists disagree I list on my site ways to save money and help the environment. Frankly, it is hard to know what to believe.
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Ramon: Yeah, I’ve forgotten. Surely you have links to the story of those “powerful special interests” claiming global cooling, yes? Please provide a few dozen.
You could limit it just to the peer-reviewed papers if you have to choose from among many.
Meanwhile, Ramon and Gard, you may want to take a look at this: Starbucks cup #249
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Why would anybody have any interest in hoaxing a thing like global warming? I can see that maybe the big oil companies could have some interest in supporting critics of global warming, but who in this world would have any interest in creating a conspiracy of thousands of scientists telling the “lie” of global warming. Of course global warming is not a hoax, it would be the most stupid hoax ever, and it’s way too big, documented and logical to be a conspiracy.
It would be nice if it was a hoax though. :)
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Or did you forget that in the 70s many of the same powerful special interests were crying global cooling and were just as convinced of that? Could it be that what is happening is related to the 11 solar cycle? Or to the maunder minimum? And that what is happening is just a part of a cycle?
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Interesting summary has come to my attention from a carbon guru. Global cooling in the news evidently goes back to 1867, at least. No refs to primary research but the news articles (not hot linked) may lead to the researchers.
The headlines alone are interesting to read. The article is about how the news media have covered global climate change and does ask for better coverage of the science. Unfortunately, I think the author (in 2006) believes the science is still at the opinion stage, not the evidentiary conclusion.
Fire and Ice Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming
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Jackie, that’s where the the denial of global warming is most damaging, in the creation and execution of plans to reduce carbon emissions. People who think there is no problem are unlikely to work for a solution.
I don’t understand the misanthropy necessary to be a climate change denialist.
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Pam, (enjoyed your blog BTW) – you beat me to the punch. I had pictured a macabre scenario where particulate pollution would be promoted to counteract global warming. Short of a massive, massive volcano, unlikely to happen.
Also, I agree that a nuclear winter scenario is unlikely as well. Just finished Wm. Langewiesch’s “Atomic Bazaar, the Rise of the Nuclear Poor” and I agree with the author’s view that _limited_ nuclear exchanges are possible, but unlikely. USA and Russia still have the majority of nuclear arsenal.
Stateless terrorists may get a few bricks of HEU here and there on the black market, but again, not a nuclear winter scenario.
So we are left with anthropogenic global warming. My thoughts are focused now on mitigation – carbon tax vs. cap and trade, USA take this more seriously, etc.
Thanks
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The global cooling research wouldn’t invalidate the warming research. There were two drivers, I believe, one was particulates (volcanoes, wildfires, and nuclear exchanges not necessarily catastrophic ones) and the other was the missing end of the current interglacial. The models were predicting that a glacial period would not take centuries but could occur quickly (decades) and that there were indicators (prior to the better climate computers and data) of such potential.
The Canadians held a major conference on sudden climatic change in 1988(?) [my notes are in deep storage, alas]
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Thanks, Jackie. While I don’t take anybody’s recitation of others’ research as authoritative unless I can see the studies, that site has basically what I recall from our debates in the air pollution control world. At the time, no one argued with the need to control pollution. The discussion was over the larger, world-wide effects if pollution were not controlled.
As I noted earlier, the particulates were controlled, which eliminated a huge cooling effect. The aerosols referred to were just being understood when I was in the field (our lab did some of the pioneering work on light scattering and sulfate and sulfide aerosols, having found them where they were not expected, and in quantities way beyond what models said then).
With both particulates and aerosols controlled, but greenhouse gases increasing, warming would be a logical prediction from the view in 1975.
Genera|’s complaint can’t overcome the stubborn facts. The climate is warming, and human activities seem to be playing an accelerant role at a minimum.
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We live in a planet of mass brain washing. Humans of course keep destroying earth ecologically but YES Global Warming is a hoax.
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[…] by Phoenix Woman on November 11th, 2007 Just don’t expect him to do the same for its debunking. He’s too much a creature of Big Business for […]
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RE: Global Cooling – good citizen science and interesting citations:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm
I have asked John Cook on occasion when issues came up that needed clarification (for me, anyway) – he always responded. If I were as smart as he, this is what I would be doing in my spare time.
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The nuclear winter argument assumes a catastrophic exchange of nuclear weapons between the U.S. and another nuclear nation. Such an exchange doses the atmosphere with particulates, which causes the cooling. Those predictions contradict current climate change trends in no way I know. Obviously it’s a reversal of the trend, but it assumes a much different human intervention into the climate.
I think research into global cooling all predates 1990.
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Try global cooling links here– http://tinyurl.com/2ctddk
I know the research was “hot” about 1980s to 1990s on possible new ice age (abrupt climate change) but now can’t find the refernces.
Then, there is always Nuclear Winter, The Anthropology of Human Survival
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I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The fact that this hoax was pounced on so readily shows that climate change deniers/delayers are _still_ looking for SOMETHING to grasp upon. Milloy and Limbaugh – now that’s funny. One thoroughly discredited industry lobbyist and the other…there are no words… using this hoax to further their own skewed reality.
Meanwhile, back in the real world… :-)
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I’d like a reference to a global cooling paper. I don’t know of any.
Back in the cretaceous period of air pollution work, our texts suggested that continued pollution would change climate one way or the other. There is room for discussion about which way things tip, based on models that compare and contrast results with differing levels of particulates and greenhouse gases. The direction of tipping was dependent on how much pollution was controlled of which types.
Particulates have been rather successfully controlled. But particulates contributed some cooling effect.
I am unaware of any prediction that cooling would prevail; since particulates have been so successfully controlled, warming seems a natural prediction out of the data we had 40 years ago. If you know of a contrary paper, I’d like a pointer to is.
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Sorry to hear about Milloy – don’t know him, but he probably means well. Rush is as rush does, you know?
I think most people understand global warming is a fact. Just they they understood global cooling was a fact between 1940 and 1970.
To my mind, the hoax factor comes in where people try to make up reasons for the warming without considering the other – often larger – implications of their “science”. Most of the science I have seen supporting a myriad reasons for global warming only works if you ignore the failure of the science to support rebuttal. You know, sort of a hoax of a hoax of a hoax.
Lastly, if we believe in something simply based upon how prolific it has been spoken about, we would all probably be Communist, Christian, and Britney Spears.
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I found a ratio of about 8 to 1, science sites versus denialist sites. I haven’t checked the chronology.
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Do a Google Blog search for global warming (I do every day!) and you’ll see that Miloy was right. It was debunked by several skeptic sites, including Climate Skeptic and GlobalWarmingHoax. It’s a feeble attempt by the Alarmists to bait the skeptics.
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