I am truly dismayed that local meterologist Kevin Williams would use his position of trusted weather authority to spread bad science and propoganda to dismiss the very real threat of global warming. I like Kevin, and enjoy his work, so I can only assume he’s been led astray by the massive PR effort underway by the large oil and energy special interests.

I decided to take a look at some of the folks leading him astray, that he cites in his op-ed piece. Maybe they have some sound, unbiased science that I’m not aware of?

Salie Baliunas
Here’s some info about Ms. Baliunas:

[...] her viewpoint - that solar variation accounts for most of the recent climate change - is not widely accepted among climate scientists.

…

Baliunas’ extra-academic positions at several think tanks funded by energy industry organizations such as the American Petroleum Institute are often cited by her opponents as a source of bias on her part. Baliunas is a member of at least nine organizations which receive financial support from the petroleum industry [10].

…

Baliunas earlier adopted a skeptical position regarding the hypothesis that CFCs were damaging to the ozone layer, which earned its originators, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Frank Sherwood Rowland, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995. Her arguments on this issue were presented at Congressional hearings held in 1995 (but before the Nobel prize announcement).

…

In 2003, Baliunas and Soon published a paper which reviewed a number of previous scientific papers and came to the conclusion that the climate hasn’t changed in the last 2000 years. However, 13 of the authors of the papers Baliunas and Soon cited refuted her interpretation of their work, and several editors of “Climate Research”, the journal which published the paper, resigned in protest at a flawed peer review process which allowed the publication. The observations used by Baliunas and Soon in respect of MWP and LIA are often not temperature proxies but indications of wet or dry; Mann et al. argue that their failure to ensure that the proxies reflect temperature renders the assessment suspect [8]. More recently, Osborn and Briffa repeated the Baliunas and Soon study but restricted themselves to records that were validated as temperature proxies, and came to a different result [9]. (emphasis mine)

So, to summarize, funded by oil and energy special interests, in the minority (and wrong) about ozone depletion, and crappy science. Not looking so good as a reference. Well, how about David Hathaway? He does say that the sun will be in a quiet cycle in 2022, but what about taking that next step, saying it will cause global cooling? A Google search on “David Hathaway”, 2022, and “global cooling” got me 4 sites: 2 corporate backed energy sites, a site by “a mining and mineral exploration specialist” and a site by someone from “Australia’s leading free market think tank.”

More biased research/reporting. Not looking so good.

Ok, how about William Gray? He’s done some great work on hurricane prediction in the past, but his recent dismissive stance on global warming’s effect on hurricane strength and number has been discredited.

But wait, what of all those scientists who signed that “Anti Global Warming Petition Project” petition? 19000 scientists can’t be wrong, can they? Sure they can, if they were duped:

“In the spring of 1998,” the Union [of Concerned Scientists] writes, “mailboxes of US scientists flooded with a packet from the ‘Global Warming Petition Project,’ including a reprint of a Wall Street Journal op-ed ‘Science has spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth,’ a copy of a faux scientific article claiming that ‘increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have no deleterious effects upon global climate,’

…

“The sponsor, the little-known Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, tried to beguile unsuspecting scientists into believing that this packet had originated from the National Academy of Sciences…which it was not. The NAS quickly distanced itself from the petition project, issuing a statement saying, ‘the petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.’

“The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science. In fact, the only criterion for signing the petition was a bachelor’s degree in science. The petition resurfaced in early 2001 in an renewed attempt to undermine international climate treaty negotiations.”

So, let’s see, a packet containing a fake scientific article, falsely mocked up to look like it came from the NAS (who quickly denied any association and repudiated the claims in the packet), and a petition where anyone with a BS degree could sign. Pretty shaky if you ask me.
And on top of that, anyone want to guess how many of those 19000 signatures are valid? Compare to a recent astro-turf effort by Republicans in Pennsylvania in getting a Green candidate on the ballot– at least 60% of the 100,000 signatures were found to be invalid.

Yikes.

And I like that he has to go back almost 15 years to find an “out-there” quote from an environmentalist. Most environmentalists I know just want to have clean air and water for our kids. I know I do.

Kevin Williams wants to broad-brush folks who care about clean air and water as short-sighted, reactionary, and destructive. I say, relying on folks who provide misleading analysis of the data, for the purposes of their corporate funders, so they can go on poisoning our climate as much as they like? To me, that’s what sounds short-sighted, reactionary, and destructive.