UPDATE: NASA has released itโs 2008 temperature data finding that last year was the ninth warmest year sinceย 1880.
Sterling Burnett, a โsenior fellowโ at the oil industry friendly National Center for Policy Analysis is claiming in a release today that global warming is a hoax because it is cold in Minnesota this winter.ย Really?
If only Burnett were right, we could move on and forget about this whole global warming thing. Unfortunately, Burnett is way off base which is no surprise considering this is the same Fox News pundit that compared Al Goreโs Inconvenient Truth to Nazi war-time propaganda. It looks like Burnett has a penchant for making grandiose claims, most likely because they get him facetime on Foxย News.
Burnett and the NCPAโs press release today declaring that โglobal warming is likely not a result of man-made activitiesโ conveniently omits two key facts that seriously bring into question Burnettโs understanding of theย basics:
1. Climate versus weather: the Nobel prize-winning climate scientist Dr. Andrew Weaver recently opined in a news article that, โEvery time there is a freaking snowfall, it seems like everybody is going, โWhatโs going on?โ Itโs frustrating as a climateย scientist.โโ
Itโs frustrating for Weaver because people (i.e. Sterling Burnett) get climate and weather confused. In the article โSnowstorms donโt mean climate change threat has passedโ Weaver describes weather as โwhat is here and now, like the sun shining or rain falling. Climate, on the other hand, is moreย long-term.โ
Weaver explained climate change as a โshift in the distribution of the likelihood of the occurrence of weather events towards the warmโ. He continued, โWhat that means is it doesnโt mean that it will never be cold; it means that the likelihood of it being cold diminishes with time, and the likelihood of it being extremely warm increases withย time.โ
You would think that someone like Sterling Burnett, who goes around touting himself as a โleading authorityโ would understand something so fundamental as the difference between weather andย climate.
2. It is โglobalโ warming, not โUnited Statesโ warming: using a cold snap in Minnesota as an argument that the entire earth is not warming is just ridiculous. The bottom line is that when you look at the global trends, the average temperature of the planet continues to rise. Hereโs a graph of the global temperatures over the last 126ย years:
(click toย enlarge)
And hereโs a great video made by the famous broadcaster and Naturalist Sir David Attenborough (of Planet Earth fame) explaining very clearly what is happening with the earthโs globalย temperature:
Now Iโm not a scientist and neither is Burnett, but all of this commonsense information about climate versus weather and global temperatures leads me to believe that *gasp* maybe Burnett is not the โleading authorityโ he claims himself to be. Nothing new here, sorry everyone, but regardless of what Burnett wants us to think, global warming is happening, human activity is to blame and the best science is telling us that the consequences will beย dire.
This month weโre giving away FREE copies Coming Clean: Breaking Americaโs Addiction to Oil andย Coal.
Go here to find out more details about DeSmogBlogโs monthly bookย give-away.
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