As world leaders and their representatives were meeting in Paris week, trying to come to an historic agreement on how to best
respond the the growing global threat of climate change, pretender
candidate and
Cruz (R-TX) made a fool of himself by convening a
Senate hearing to attempt to prove that man-made climate climate doesn’t even exist.
“Facts matter, science matters, data matters. That’s what this hearing is about.”
That’s how
Cruz (R-TX), the chairman of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, began a Monday
hearing
he called about the reality of human-caused climate change. Cruz – who
is also running for president – does not believe that human-caused
climate change is real, which he made clear at Monday’s hearing. He did
not make it clear that 97 percent of climate scientists disagree with
him, but such is life in the U.S. Senate, where
70 percent of Republicans largely side with Cruz.
The thing about Cruz, though, it’s that he’s a master of political
debate. He spoke forcefully and eloquently at Monday’s hearing about
what he said were falsehoods surrounding the scientific consensus on
climate change. He even injected some real data into his harsh rhetoric,
which made him sound even smarter.
Much of the information Cruz cited, however, was presented in
perplexing ways. He confused completely different geographic locations,
took data out of context, and made at least one unintentionally
hilarious historical comparison.
With his assertion that “science and data matter” in mind, here is a
debunking of some unscientific things Cruz said during his climate change ‘hearing.’
What Cruz said: A bunch of scientists got stuck in Antarctic ice last year, so John Kerry was wrong about Arctic ice melt.
“The summer of 2013 has come and gone, and John Kerry was not just a
little bit — he was wildly, extraordinarily, entirely wrong. Had the
[2014] Antarctic expedition in the picture next to it not believed the
global warming alarmists, had they actually looked to the science and
the evidence … they wouldn’t have been looked down and been surprised
when they got stuck in ice.”
What science says: The Antarctic is not the same as the Arctic. (pause for laughter!)
Climate science deniers across the internet love
the story of the Antarctic ice scientists.
Last year, on their way to study climate change’s impact on
Antarctic, the scientists’ ship became frozen in ice, unable to move.
They eventually had to be airlifted from the vessel. For Ted Cruz, this
seemed like a perfect way to open his hearing: John Kerry said Arctic
ice would be gone in 2013. But here are a bunch of scientists, in 2014,
frozen in Antarctic ice.
This is a laughably false comparison. The Arctic and the Antarctic
are literally polar opposites, and each is impacted by global warming in
fundamentally different ways. From
LiveScience:
“Strong circumpolar winds may be compacting and thickening the
Antarctic ice. But the Arctic ice is much more vulnerable to ocean
warming, and summer storms only speedup the thaw.”
Cruz said: CO2 isn’t bad, because we’ve had more CO2 in our atmosphere then we have right now.
“I would note that the history with markedly more CO2 pre-dated the
industrial revolution, so it didn’t come from automobiles or the burning
of carbon fuels. … I would note those facts are directly contrary to
what the global warming alarmists tell us day in and day out, and what
the media who echoes those concerns tell us day in and day out.”
Science says: The last time CO2 was this high, humans didn’t exist, and the planet was a terrifying place.
According to Cruz, the carbon dioxide humans emit can’t be harming
the planet, because the planet had more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere
before the industrial revolution.
This is a pretty easy one to debunk. Yes, the earth had more carbon
dioxide before the industrial revolution – but that was literally
millions of years ago, before humans existed.
What Cruz said: Arctic and Antarctic ice are both increasing.
“Here are the inconvenient facts about the polar ice caps.
The Arctic is not ice free. This year’s minimum sea ice extent was well
above the record low observed in 2011. In the Antarctic, a recent study…
indicates that the ice is not only not decreasing, but is in fact
increasing in mass, directly contrary to what the global warming
alarmists had told us would be happening.”
What science says: Sea ice in the Arctic and land ice in the Antarctic have been dramatically decreasing for decades.
Let’s just state this for the record: Climate change doesn’t mean
that you’ll see higher temperatures and less ice year after year. It
means that on average, over many decades, you’ll see higher temperatures
and less ice.
Cruz said that minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic “was well above
the record low observed in 2011.” First, Cruz just directly admitted the
lowest-ever-recorded minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was just four
years ago.
Second, Cruz doesn’t mention that Arctic ice as a whole has been decreasing for decades.
As for Antarctic ice, Cruz is right when he says sea ice is growing.
But Antarctic land ice – glaciers, ice sheets, and ice masses that have
accumulated over thousands of years – is decreasing at dramatic rates.
And that’s arguably much more important than sea ice, considering
Antarctica’s sea ice completely melts every year.
Cruz said: It doesn’t matter that 97 percent of
scientists agree about climate change, because 97 percent of scientists
said the sun rotated around the earth in the 1600s.
What science says: There were no ‘scientists’ in the 1600s. Scientists did not use the modern
scientific method until the 17th century.
This is ostensibly why Cruz disagrees with the fact that
multiple peer-reviewed studies
show 97 percent of climate scientists agreeing that humans cause global
warming: because in 1615, scientists thought the sun rotated around the
Earth.
Today, scientists use the
scientific method.
This is really great, because the scientific method requires people to
back up their evidence using empirical data – they can’t apply their own
personal biases to it. To have success using the scientific method, a
person with a completely different worldview will be able to replicate
what you have found. The scientific method means looking outside
yourself to find empirical truth.
In 1615, by contrast, scientists didn’t use the scientific method.
Scientists were philosophers and ideologues, smart white men who sat in
armchairs thinking about what made sense to them. After they thought
about it for awhile, they’d say things, and then people would believe
them or they wouldn’t.
So in other words, Ted Cruz is essentially saying that the scientific
method is no more reliable than a bunch of white dudes sitting in
armchairs yelling about how they believe the world works.
What Cruz said: Satellite data shows no warming for the last 18 years.
“According to the satellite data, there has been no significant
global warming for the past 18 years. Those are the data. The global
warming alarmists don’t like these data, they are inconvenient to their
narrative. But facts and evidence matters.”
What science says: Satellite data, ground-based weather station data, and sea-based buoy data all show
a steady warming trend over the long term.
Ted Cruz loves satellite data. He
talks about it all the time.
But like most of Cruz’s statements regarding climate science, his
focus on this particular type of data in this particular small
time-frame contains an element of truth and ignores larger context. And
climate change is all about larger context.
As a reminder: Climate change doesn’t mean that you’ll see higher
temperatures every year. It means that on average, over many decades,
you’ll see higher temperatures.
When Cruz says there’s been “no warming” in 18 years, that’s because
1998 was an abnormally warm year. But if you start, say, in 1950, the
long-term, gradual trend in temperatures has gone distinctly upward. And
despite 1998 being a very warm year (because of an El Nino),
13 of the 15 warmest years ever recorded
all happened since the year 2000. 2015 is set to be the hottest year on
record. And according the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, “each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at
the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850.”
It’s also worth noting that the data Cruz relies on comes from a scientist who has
publicly decried Cruz
for using his data to make claims that global warming isn’t real. For
that scientist, the way people interpret his data matters — it’s clear, however, if it matters not to Cruz.
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