{"id":16156,"date":"2017-03-13T13:34:26","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T18:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/?p=16156"},"modified":"2017-03-14T10:34:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T15:34:59","slug":"climate-confusion-in-the-age-of-alternative-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2017\/03\/13\/climate-confusion-in-the-age-of-alternative-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Confusion in the Age of “Alternative Facts”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earth as seen from a NOAA weather satellite. Photo: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A very familiar type of ad recently appeared in the New York Times<\/em>. It was the sort of fact-free manifesto normally found only on the fringes of the Internet, until someone with enough money decides to buy a full page in a newspaper.<\/p>\n

These kinds of public declarations can be about anything from ancient nationalist grudges to fad nutritional theories. This one, by an obscure South Korean firm called Samsung Chemical Coating Company (no apparent relation to the electronics company), declared that carbon dioxide pollution isn\u2019t causing climate change and that global warming will end in 2060 and be replaced by a destructive ice age, among other similarly oddball assertions.<\/p>\n

Usually this kind of claim is barely worth refuting, as it is flatly contradicted by the consensus of the international scientific community. But one important detail made this ad different, and more dangerous.<\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s be clear about the substance of the ad and the real scientific facts.<\/p>\n

There is absolutely no scientific basis or merit to the claims being made in the ad. No actual climate scientist takes seriously catastrophes in movies like The Day After Tomorrow<\/em> becoming reality, or strange theories like the idea that creatures mutated from sunlight at the end of an ice age. No information about their \u201cstudy\u201d is available on the Internet, nor in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. There is no explanation about how they arrived at their conclusions, or any discussion of the information or data that served as the basis for their claims. And if you try Googling information about the authors, you\u2019ll come up empty.<\/p>\n

Even the more nuanced statements in the ad about the relationships between Earth\u2019s precession, glacial cycles, and sea level rise are unsubstantiated. The authors use these unsupported claims as \u201cproof\u201d that carbon dioxide emissions do not cause global warming \u2014 an argument that should not be taken seriously given the lack of any supporting data.\u00a0Their claims also demonstrate a profound ignorance of established physics. And the direct \u201ccertainty\u201d throughout the ads about specific events \u2013 such as the disappearance of Earth\u2019s magnetic field \u2013 adds to the characteristically unscientific approach.<\/p>\n

All of these are hallmarks of the Crazy Full Page Ad.<\/p>\n

Here is the truth:<\/p>\n