Climate Depot: Don’t let Logic Get in the Way of a Good Attack

Antarctica – Still frozen, for now

I expected Climate Depot to be slicker. It’s a site run by Mark Morano, a former reporter for the Rush Limbaugh show and a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. It’s clear that he doesn’t know anything about science but I thought a character like that would have a nicer looking  website.

Today the site has fixed its crosshairs on AP science reporter Seth Borenstein, who has offended them yet again but writing about climate change as if it’s a problem. I’ve run afoul of climate skeptic bloggers before, and so I may be biased in saying they can be childish and vindictive and lack any sense of logic. When I covered the “climategate” affair, a similar denier site called  Watts Up With That accused me of being a porn writer because I’d written some columns about the science of sex. They also wrongly accused me of having no science background. There’s always a sexist tinge when they attack me, but the way they’ve gone after Borenstein shows that over at Climate Depot they are equal opportunity bullies.

It started with an interesting story about slight growth measured in Antarctic sea ice.

Climate change skeptics have seized on the Antarctic ice to argue that the globe isn't warming and that scientists are ignoring the southern continent because it's not convenient. But scientists say the skeptics are misinterpreting what's happening and why.

Shifts in wind patterns and the giant ozone hole over the Antarctic this time of year—both related to human activity—are probably behind the increase in ice, experts say. This subtle growth in winter sea ice since scientists began measuring it in 1979 was initially surprising, they say, but makes sense the more it is studied.

Mike Lemonick also covered this issue for Climate Central, not to be confused with Climate Depot. His story should have made the deniers even madder because it’s blunter and lays out a more direct argument against the denier spin. His story states up high that the growth of Antarctic sea ice is minuscule compared to the shrinking of ice in the Arctic.

…..The first is that the 1 percent growth per decade in the Antarctic pales next to the much faster 15.5 percent drop per decade in the Arctic. They aren’t even in the same ballpark. Not only that: while the sea ice bordering Antarctica has been growing slightly, the massive ice sheets that sit directly atop the frozen continent are shrinking, at an accelerating rate, with worrisome implications for global sea level rise.

The disparity is even more dramatic when you realize that most of the sea ice surrounding Antarctica drifts away during the summer to melt in warmer waters, and reforms anew in the winter. The Antarctic sea ice cover is nearly all first-year ice, which is typically 3 to 6 feet thick. In the Arctic, by contrast, the ice is hemmed in by Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland. It mostly can’t drift away, so whatever is left behind at the end of summer gets even thicker the following winter.

But for whatever reason the Climate Depot people focused on Borenstein, with a wild-eyed caricature and what may be a picture of the prolific and versatile AP science writer in a Halloween costume. It’s all incredibly lame. Then there’s a link to another blog called Joannenova. The author says she’s a “science presenter, writer, speaker and former TV host,” thus giving people yet another reason not to watch TV. Here’s what she says:  

In a move of Olympian audacity, Seth Borenstein keeps a straight face and shamelessly shifts to pretending that more Antarctic sea-ice fits their climate change theory. Yet again climate models fail to predict things in advance, they only do the post modern type of prediction — the bury-my-bewilderment type, after the fact. Once more, nothing can disprove the theory of man-made climate catastrophe.

What’s the argument here? If all the climate models aren’t perfect we should close our eyes to the fact that we’ve dramatically changed the atmosphere? Or that the Arctic is melting? Lemonick does a good job of reminding readers why the two ice caps are so different, and why it makes sense the Arctic would melt first:  

In any case, climate scientists have long expected that the Arctic would warm up faster than the Antarctic. After all, the former is an ocean surrounded by land, while the latter is land surrounded by ocean. Wind patterns, weather systems and ocean currents behave differently at the two poles. And because the coldest part of the Antarctic is land, the ice there has been able to accumulate into a giant ice cube the size of a continent and up to two miles thick — which tends to hold back local warming considerably.

By the second half of the century, however, climatologists say that the human warming signal will become more apparent, and Antarctic sea ice will begin to follow its Arctic cousin in a downward spiral. That, in turn, could speed up melting of the all-important Antarctic land ice, thereby raising global sea levels.

Kudos to both Lemonick and Borenstein. Getting trashed by climate depot is a badge of honor we should all strive to achieve.