Julie Kelly, a freelance writer for various conservative sites, has written another in what is a long line of attempts by conservative hacks to pretend global warming is not occurring (Link to Kelly’s article). Like other climate denialists who have written in this vein, she plays fast and loose with the facts, and shows an abysmally low understanding of the science.

The only correct point she makes is that climate scientists and environmentalists were upset by the election of Trump and by the anti-science policies he has begun to implement. Other than that, her idea that 2017 was a disastrous year for those who believe in anthropogenic global warming falls flat on its face.

She starts by hyping the recent unusual cold snap in much of the country, as if a short-term event in one relatively small part of the world might indicate that global warming is a hoax. She ignores the fact that the overall global temperature during this cold snap in the US is still above average, and she ignores the fact that even parts of the US, such as much of the West and Alaska, are basking in relative warmth. She claims that a map posted by the Weather Channel does not clearly indicate the overall global warmth the Weather Channel said it did. Unfortunately, her article links, not to the map she is referring to, but to a map of the world’s countries at geology.com, a map with no information on climate or weather. Maps of the global temperature anomaly that I could find do show a clear warming overall. Also, the numbers behind the map show overall warming. That is why it is generally a bad and potentially deceptive practice to “eyeball” a map or other kind of visual representation of data and claim it proves one thing or the other, but that is just what Kelly did.

She then mocks the idea that global warming might have something to do with the cold air plunging unusually far south. Some scientists have pointed out that the global temperature changes could alter the jet streams, thus allowing Arctic air to more easily and powerfully escape toward the south. She offers no refutation of this idea, just presents the exaggeration that “climate experts [blamed] every destructive weather event this year…on anthropogenic global warming” and call the “most brutal cold snap in decades as nothing more than a normal appearance by Old Man Winter.”

Of course, climate scientists did not blame every extreme weather event on global warming. What they have done is show how global warming contributes to the intensity of weather events. There is a big difference between cause and contribute. It’s certainly not surprising that if you have an ocean with more heat and an atmosphere with more heat and more moisture, you are going to increase the chances of more powerful storms. It’s certainly reasonable also that the changes that are occurring in the earth’s land surface, ocean areas, and atmosphere can include alterations to the way the earth’s systems function, such as changes in ocean currents, precipitation patterns, and the jet streams.

Ms. Kelly ends her essay with the most laughable idea yet, the idea that some scientists think that global cooling is upon us. For proof, she links to a short piece by Marc Morano, an infamous climate change denier. He in turn briefly refers to a veritable who’s who of climate denying pseudo-scientific “experts”. Here are some of these experts:

• Don Easterbrook, an “eminent geologist” who has been forecasting global cooling for years, but it has never happened. Easterbrook is a professor emeritus of geology from Western Washington University, but his views have been unanimously rejected by the current geology faculty.
• Henrik Svensmark, who theorizes that the sun’s activity, through the changes in its magnetic field and subsequent changes in shielding the earth from galactic cosmic rays, affects cloud cover and thus the temperature of the earth. Unfortunately for Svensmark, there is no correlation between historical trends in sun activity and the global temperature.
• Habibullo Abdussamatov, a Russian solar physicist, who has predicted for years that the next Little Ice Age is upon us. Similar to Svensmark, he bases his claims on the sun’s activity, but the actual data keep proving him wrong.
• Joe Bastardi, a former meteorologist, who believes CO2 plays no significant role in global warming. He claimed at least as early as 2009 that the global temperature would drop by at least a degree in the next 20 to 30 years.

These people are making predictions about global cooling and getting proved wrong again and again.  Global temperatures hit records in 2014, then 2015, and then again in 2016, with 2017 guaranteed to be close to those three record years (and it looks like it will be a record high year for years that are not influenced by an El Nino). We don’t need to wait 20 or 30 years to see if global cooling will occur. We know it won’t and, besides, we can’t afford to wait.

Unfortunately, if you monitor the rightwing media, you will see articles at least once a week trying to pretend that global warming is not happening, that it is a hoax somehow perpetrated by an amazingly sophisticated conspiracy of thousands of scientists all over the world. Writers like Julie Kelly lie and deceive, and thus do our country, our environment, and our children great harm.