House 'Sciences' committee makes US a laughingstock by tweeting Breitbart fake news

[Starlight]

The Republican-controlled House Science committee tweeted this week:

.@BreitbartNews: Global Temperatures Plunge. Icy Silence from Climate Alarmists

Breitbart is a conservative propaganda website that provides a mixture of entirely false propaganda, biased opinion pieces, and news. For a science committee to link to Breitbart publicly is embarrassing in and of itself, but this particular article is all kinds of false. The article begins:

"Global land temperatures have plummeted by one degree Celsius since the middle of this year – the biggest and steepest fall on record."

1. The last part of this statement is entirely false - in no way is this the 'biggest and steepest fall on record'.
2. The first part of this statement is gratuitously misleading - "Global land temperatures". The oceans constitute 71% of earth's surface, and they and their temperature very much count as being part of earth. Due to the expected transition from El Nino to La Nina weather patterns over the last 6 months, heat has been redistributed from the land to the oceans. The average temperature over all of earth has risen slightly.
Overall, this article is a combination of outrightly false and deliberately designed to mislead.

The Republican House Science committee has long been an embarrassment to America, with the leadership of the committee lacking any science qualifications:

Lamar S. Smith, Texas, Chairman - BA in American Studies
Frank Lucas, Oklahoma, Vice Chairman - degree in Agricultural Economics
Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin, Chairman emeritus - degree in Political Science, and Doctor of Law

If a PhD in science, like I have, is asking too much of them, then at least you'd think they could find a person with a BSc among the 247 elected Republicans in the House of Representatives. But apparently they couldn't find anyone actually qualified in science to lead the House Science committee - or, more likely I suspect, they didn't want to, because the oil and gas lobbyists were instructing them to sabotage it.

Compare to Europe - the current Chair of the European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy Committee is representative Jerzy Buzek, who has an M.S. and PhD in science, was a Professor of technical sciences for several years, and has authored over 200 research papers, and three patents.

Here are two major standard datasets of temperatures, the first is the land-only temperature data, that has 'plummeted' in the most recent bar, and for which records go back to 1880, while the second is satellite data that includes ocean temperatures which goes back only as far as 1979.
temp.jpg
Temp2.gif
It can easily be seen that both graphs show long-term warming trends, and that there is no sign of any recent major cooling trend. It can be easily noted from that the land-temperature graph that the most recent bar that has 'plummeted' is well within the range of past fluctuations, and is in no way whatsoever "the biggest and steepest fall on record" like the false article claimed.

Bernie Sanders responded to the House Science committee's misinformation by tweeting:

Where'd you get your PhD? Trump University?

Meanwhile scientists around the world have been quick to condemn the misinformation, and have castigated the Republican-led House Sciences committee and Breitbart for presenting and perpetuating such blatantly false information about such an important subject.

[seer]

Thankfully we won't have to put up with alarmist's policies the next 4-8 years, and will roll back Obama's executive orders.

[Starlight]

Thankfully we won't have to put up with alarmist's policies the next 4-8 years, and will roll back Obama's executive orders.

At this stage I kind of just assume that at some point in the next 4-8 years I'll be marching as part of a global protest movement demanding that economic sanctions be placed on America due to its role in destroying the world's climate and its failure to abide by unanimous international agreements on the subject.

[Leonhard]

I'm sorry that you're the ones to post these things Starlight. Since your comments about approving of infanticide, and your general attitude, you've lost just about all standing here. I personally vouch entirely for this OP though.

Thankfully we won't have to put up with alarmist's policies the next 4-8 years...

What do you consider to be an alarmist policy? And why is rolling them back a good thing?

[Leonhard]

Just because Trump won Seer, and you're sick of the liberals winning a lot of battle, doesn't mean then that what the Republicans are doing is automatically good. Science denial is definitely not a pretty part of the Republican party, and its a part I have zero sympathy for.

[One Bad Pig]

Tweets make countries laughingstocks now?

Spare us the melodrama.

[Leonhard]

Tweets make countries laughingstocks now?

Spare us the melodrama.

What's not to take serious about it? It does represent precisely the viewpoint the Republican party has about climate change, namely they think it isn't happening, its a chinese conspiracy by Al Gore, the warming is caused by the sun, the world is actually getting colder and anyway it doesn't matter. Basically all excuses to roll back any attempts at a quicker transitioning to renewables, which will delay that process and which will ultimately have an environmental cost.

Yes that's embarrassing. It's kinda hard to see how I should vote for the anti-science party, or even support them as an ally across the sea.

[One Bad Pig]

What's not to take serious about it? It does represent precisely the viewpoint the Republican party has about climate change, namely they think it isn't happening, its a chinese conspiracy by Al Gore, the warming is caused by the sun, the world is actually getting colder and anyway it doesn't matter. Basically all excuses to roll back any attempts at a quicker transitioning to renewables, which will delay that process and which will ultimately have an environmental cost.

Yes that's embarrassing. It's kinda hard to see how I should vote for the anti-science party, or even support them as an ally across the sea.

To put it mildly, this is an unfair characterization of the viepoint of "the Republican party". It is hardly monolithic.

It's also hardly the most embarassing science-related thing done by a government.

[Leonhard]

These tweets are also more or less the opinions of the guy Trump appointed as head of the transition team for the EPA. A guy who's only credentials is that he denies climate change, and that's literally it. A guy who historically defended the tobacco companies. Who uses old, worn-out and long debunked climate change denial claims.

He's not even a respectful dissenter like some of the few scientists I know who has counterpoints. He uses pseudoscience to substantiate his point.

Post-fact world.

[One Bad Pig]

These tweets are also more or less the opinions of the guy Trump appointed as head of the transition team for the EPA. A guy who's only credentials is that he denies climate change, and that's literally it. A guy who historically defended the tobacco companies. Who uses old, worn-out and long debunked climate change denial claims.

He's not even a respectful dissenter like some of the few scientists I know who has counterpoints. He uses pseudoscience to substantiate his point.

Post-fact world.

I'm not interested in getting into yet another climate change debate. You people have the tendency to promulgate your beliefs with sufficient fervor to put a religious fanatic to shame, and then wonder why we don't take all your claims seriously.

[Leonhard]

To put it mildly, this is an unfair characterization of the viepoint of "the Republican party". It is hardly monolithic.

It's also hardly the most embarassing science-related thing done by a government.

Its pretty bad. Up there with calling coal power 'clean', however I'm sure there's worse stuff. The world has a had a long history. The Soviets ridiculous use of Lamarckanism in their genetics, is credited with causing a famine. That might be worse. However in recent history, it's definitely up there.

And true, but neither are the Left monolithic in any of their sayings, it remains true that the Republicans hold strongly that either what science says about climate change is irrelevant (politically biased, false, a scam produced in China, Al Gore propaganda, leftist manipulations, etc...) or its true but nothing should be done about it. I hear almost nothing about the latter, and mostly about the former. Trump infamously claims its a Chinese hoax. Rush Limbaugh (and the guy Trump appointed to oversee the transition team for the EPA) believes the world is getting colder, satellite observations be damned. And Trump has said he'll close down the earth monitoring department of NASA, who produces those measurements (you can't be afraid of what you can't see after all).

Does that sound good to you?

[seanD]

At this stage I kind of just assume that at some point in the next 4-8 years I'll be marching as part of a global protest movement demanding that economic sanctions be placed on America due to its role in destroying the world's climate and its failure to abide by unanimous international agreements on the subject.

Yes. I'm sure the populace movements forming all over the globe because they're tried of the elites raping them economically will reverse course and start marching in favor of a carbon tax lol.

[Leonhard]

I'm not interested in getting into yet another climate change debate. You people have the tendency to promulgate your beliefs with sufficient fervor to put a religious fanatic to shame, and then wonder why we don't take all your claims seriously.

I respect your choice to pick your battle. I don't see what the fervor is, other than us arguing our point. What would a sufficient amount of fervor look like to you? I've only argued for reasonable policies, even though I've been accused by people on this forum of wanting industry to ground to a halt immediately, yet I've argued nothing of the kind, neither has any serious institute on climate change policies I've ever seen. All I've proposed is what they've proposed, context sensitive (depending on countries, location, means) transition to renewable energies, and the sort of policies that can be put in place to facilitate that.

That's all I've argued for. As well as arguing for an explaining the case for why we know for a fact that the Earth has been getting significantly warmer, faster than any recorded natural process since the 70ies, how this is explained by adequately by a combination of CO2 + Water Vapour Cycle Greenhouse effects, and that none of the other proposals, axial tilt, cosmic radiation cloud seeding, solar intensity variation, etc... explains it.

I'm sorry if you find that to be too much. I don't know what to say about that.

You're not obligated to argue your case if you're suspicious about whether the climate is changing, but don't expect me to sit quietly about it when it deals on a matter that affects the world quite significantly.

[Leonhard]

Yes. I'm sure the populace movements forming all over the globe because they're tried of the elites raping them economically will reverse course and start marching in favor of a carbon tax lol.

Short term costs vs long term costs. It can be cheap in the short run if we don't speed up transitioning to renewables (which is inevitable, this will be the last century primarily powered by fossil fuels), but we'll pay the price later with more severe climate change.

[seanD]

Short term costs vs long term costs. Pay 5% for thirty years now, vs paying 30% forever later. Which do you prefer?

All they're going to hear is "carbon tax," and that'll be enough.