Stossel Attempts Climate Journalism, Part 1

This is part 1. My response to part 2 is here.

John Stossel is at it again. He has released a new video of shoddy journalism catering to the partisan rhetoric of the Heartland Institute. In this video, Stossel claims that scientists don't actually agree about the risks climate change poses to humanity, and he promises to correct claims made by "activists and the media" by identifying seven of their myths and showing why they are wrong. He promises that that this will come in two parts, correcting three of these "myths" in this video, and presumably four in the next. In this post, I'd like to see how he did. I'll begin with looking at his rhetorical strategy, and then look at each of the three myths he covers in this video.

Rhetorical Strategy: Dishonest Soundbites + Partisan "Experts"

Stossel's strategy here is to show soundbites from people sharing on news stories, documentaries, comedy routines, adds, and YouTube videos that he wants us to believe are examples of activists and the media promoting the myths he wants to debunk. But these soundbites are often taken out of context and misused by Stossel. For instance, the first myth is that "the Arctic will soon by ice free." Immediately after announcing this as the first myth, he shows a clip of someone saying, "We don't have decades; we hardly have years." We're left to believe that he's talking about until the Arctic becomes ice free. But if you track down the news story where where he took the clip, it's clear he's talking about only the Knik Glacier in Alaska, not the entire Arctic. The story points out that some of these glaciers are already past the point of no return. Later in the story, Mauri Pelto points out that he's worked on some 250 glaciers, and all of them are retreating, and some are already gone.  So the clip was factual for what he was talking about; Stossel took it out of context and misused it, which is dishonest, shoddy journalism.

Stossel then looks to correct the myths promoted by "activists and media" by showing that not all scientists agree with these claims. To show this, Stossel enlists the help of Linnea Lueken. He informs us that she is a "research fellow" at the Heartland Institute, apparently qualifying her as one of these "scientists" that disagrees with these media myths. He doesn't tell you that the only qualifications Lueken needed to become a "research fellow" for Heartland was a B.S. in Petroleum Engineering and experience working for the petroleum industry in the "Gulf of Mexico on deepwater drillships as a logging geologist." That's right on her bio for Heartland. In other words, by her own admission she's a shill with a clear conflict of interest in this discussion. She is not a climate scientist disagreeing with the scientific consensus on AGW.

Now to be clear, Lueken's (lack of) credentials are irrelevant should her claims turn out to be cogent and factual. If Stossel and Lueken did their homework, researched the evidence and the scientific literature, and documented both the myths and the corrections to these myths with scientific evidence, then fantastic; I'll apologize for pointing out that she's a shill, not a climate scientist. But as we'll see, Lueken says nothing to dispel what scientists are actually saying about risks associated with AGW, and what she does say does not hold up to scrutiny. Let's look at each of these "myths" in turn. In the interests of time, I'll not make a sentence by sentence rebuttal, but instead provide my overall evaluation and cite the relevant scientific literature so that you can check up on me to see if I'm correct (a courtesy that Stossel doesn't provide).

Myth #1: "The Arctic Will Soon by Ice Free"

The first supposed myth is that "the Arctic will soon be ice free." The most sympathetic way to understand this supposed myth is the Arctic will soon experience summers free of sea ice. Scientists have clearly identified declining trends in sea ice minimum extent. Projections from those trends and from models show that we may experience our first sea-ice free Arctic as early as 2030, but more likely sometimes after mid-century. The phrase "ice-free" here has to do with shipping navigation; it's not that there will be absolutely no ice but that there well be less than 15% ice cover so that shipping navigation will be unimpeded by floating ice. That equates to having a sea ice extent below 1 million km^2. Here's the IPCC's summary of future projections:

The Arctic Ocean will likely become practically sea ice free during the seasonal sea ice minimum for the first time before 2050 in all considered SSP scenarios. There is no tipping point for this loss of Arctic summer sea ice (high confidence). The practically ice-free state is projected to occur more often with higher greenhouse gas concentrations, and it will become the new normal for high-emissions scenarios by the end of this century (high confidence). Based on observational evidence, Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) models and conceptual understanding, the substantial satellite-observed decrease of Arctic sea ice area over the period 1979–2019 is well described as a linear function of global mean surface temperature, and thus of cumulative anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, with superimposed internal variability (high confidence).

For the IPCC, "likely" means 66% probability. So the IPCC is saying there's a good chance that the first Arctic summer with < 1 million km^2 sea ice extent will happen prior to 2050. The literature does not support the claim that it will likely happen prior to 2030 or by 2013. While Al Gore didn't get the scientific evidence correct about sea ice loss, Stossel and Lueken misrepresented Gore and were wrong to suggest that no one called him on that. Maslowski himself, the author Gore referenced, called him out saying, “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.” And contrary to Stossel and Lueken, Arctic sea ice is in decline with natural variability accounting for a significant fraction of the trend, pretty much just as described by the IPCC above.

September Minimum Arctic Sea Ice Extent

September Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Extent (NSIDC/NASA)

Things just get worse from here, because Stossel mixes summer Arctic sea ice with Arctic mountain glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS). While mountain glaciers are shrinking and some have already been lost, nobody expects us to lose all Arctic mountain glaciers "soon." Likewise, the GrIS still has a lot of ice, and nobody is predicting the GrIS will be free of ice anytime "soon." It will take hundreds if not thousands of years to lose all the GrIS. Scientists expect that sea levels will increase by 2-3 ft by 2100. About half of that will be from thermal expansion of the oceans. The other half will be from the loss of mountain glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets; and while Greenland will be the largest contributor of the three, there will still be a lot of ice on the GrIS by 2100. Unfortunately, 2-3 ft is still enough to cause significant problems for coastal communities. And the problem isn't limited to the Arctic. Globally, the cryosphere is shrinking in response to global warming.

Global Ice Mass is Shrinking

Stossel and Lueken have engaged in some really shoddy journalism and misleading research. They misrepresented what scientists actually expect about summer Arctic sea ice, and then they intentionally conflated claims about summer Arc sea ice with landed glaciers.

Myth #2: "Polar Bears are Going Extinct"

Stossel's second supposed myth is that Polar Bears are going extinct. The rebuttal from Lueken is that Polar Bears are actually increasing in number. Here's the graph shown in the video.

There are two huge problems with this line of thinking. First, the reliability of the early data is pretty suspect. Polar bears live in the most remote areas on earth, and they are difficult to count; all the data before 1980 is guesswork and shouldn't be compared to recent data. AFP's fact check reports a survey of 17 polar bear scientists, and all of them responded saying that this graph does not support the conclusion that Polar Bears aren't threatened by climate change. Thea Bechshoft summarizes what appears to be the consensus among scientists who actually study polar bears: "Data from the 50's and 60's are at best highly unreliable guesstimates that cannot be compared to the modern polar bear population monitoring methods we use today." It's possible that Polar Bear populations have increased, because polar bears were intensely hunted until hunting was largely banned in 1976, and there may have been a recovery due to that imposed ban. But the amount of recovery can't be known because the early data here is so unreliable. Either way, we can't conclude from this that climate change isn't a threat to Polar Bears. Evaluation of trends in subpopulations of polar bears shows that of the populations where we have sufficient evidence, 5 are stable, 1 is increasing and 3 are decreasing in population size. For the rest, scientists can't say for sure.

Trends in Polar Bear Subpopulations

Second, the reason why scientists have concluded that Polar Bears are threatened is because AGW is causing a significant reduction in Arctic sea ice. Polar bears depend on floating sea ice with some open water for hunting. During the winter time, while ocean surface can be fully covered with ice, Polar Bears hibernate. Mothers need enough fat stores for their cubs to survive the winter; if they can't acquire enough extra body mass to sustain the lives of their cubs, the cubs will emerge in the Spring malnourished. If there's not enough sea ice during the summer, they don't have floating platforms from which to hunt for food; they are less likely to build up enough extra body mass, and the health of their offspring is threatened. So the longer the ocean surface is free of summer sea ice, the more time they can't build up body mass, and the greater chances that their cubs will not survive the winter or will be born malnourished. These conditions have not yet emerged across the Arctic. Some areas farther north may actually see more productive hunting temporarily as sea ice moves into optimal conditions (from having summers with too much sea ice). Other areas are likely to see more ice free months earlier. But as we've already seen, these conditions are not expected to emerge across the Arctic until ~2050. Consequently, even with the quality data that we do have, some polar bear populations are not yet experiencing enough habitat loss to have malnourished cubs, though some are. 

The above graph from another fact check illustrates this quite nicely, though it's about a decade old. The real threats to Polar Bears have not fully emerged yet, but the persistent trends towards those conditions are the reason why Polar Bears are considered threatened, and there is a significant risk of extinction following 2050, unless Polar Bears are able to adapt to find alternative ways to find food.

Myth #3: "Climate Change is Causing Food Shortages"

Stossel's third supposed myth is that "climate change is causing food shortages" and apparently will result in the extinction of the human race. Neither Stossel nor Lueken supplied evidence that scientists are predicting the extinction of the human race. The story clip says there is increased risk of "mass extinctions" for other species and "food shortages" for humans. Stossel then shows a graph showing an increase in crop yields. However, he fails to acknowledge the crux of the problem. We know crop yields have increased. What he doesn't show is that crop yields would be higher without AGW, and global population is rapidly growing such that we're going to need those extra crop yields that we're missing to feed 10 billion or more people in the future. But the evidence so far that the effect of climate change should produce a mixed bag of results, with negatives outweighing positives when considering increased temperatures, threats from pests, disease, weeds, and significant disruptions of the hydrological cycle. We can't just look at CO2 fertilization as if it's the only significant variable affecting crop yields.

Negatives Outweigh Positives for Climate Change Impacts to Crops

And Lueken's point that we inject CO2 into greenhouses is a red herring. They do that because  greenhouses are enclosed spaces, so CO2 levels decrease during the day. Without elevated CO2 in greenhouses photosynthesis during the data may draw down CO2 levels to ~150 ppm. This is not a problem with ambient air. Furthermore, you can control for moisture, pests, and disease in greenhouses. You can't do that in large fields. Greening has happened, but greening can benefit weeds, pests and disease as well as crops, and warming disrupts the hydrological cycle, making some areas more subject to flooding and others more subject to arid conditions. VPD has also increased with warming, and scientists do not expect the land carbon sink to keep up with continued emissions.

Conclusion

Stossel is both uninformed and misleading, and Lueken clearly is not researching the actual scientific evidence behind these so-called myths. In fact, she works for an organization that exists to produce disinform about climate. What Heartland calls a "research fellow" appears to be someone someone who's job it is to find ways to creatively distort the evidence to suit the political ambitions of Heartland. There is no examination of the actual scientific research here, just a bunch of political propaganda and disinformation.

Certainly there are examples of the media, politicians, and "activists" distorting the evidence, and I wouldn't disagree with that. However, the solution to bad information in the media is not to produce more disinformation while attempting to pass it off as a fact check of the media. This is all Stossel and Lueken have done.

References:

Arctic Ice

Arctic Sea Ice

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