Grading PolitiFact: James Inhofe and the science of climate change

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Catharine Richert:  writer, researcher
Greg Joyce:  editor

Analysis:

I admit it.  I do not trust the newspapers.  And that distrust spills over to fact check operations run by newspapers.  And when I see a key citation missing from a citation list, it immediately plays on that mistrust.

The missing citation?  The quotation of Sen. James Inhofe (R, Okla.) about which Catharine Richert was writing.

CNN had the transcript.  PolitiFact has little excuse.

Senator Inhofe, let me start with you because the EPA administrator Lisa Jackson today she said this in announcing the steps the Obama administration wants to advance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LISA JACKSON, EPA ADMINISTRATOR: There is nothing in the hacked e-mails that undermines the science upon which this decision is based.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Is she right?

SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R), OKLAHOMA: Oh, no. She's not right. We had Lisa Jackson before my committee, oh, not more than a week, maybe a week and a half ago. She said that they relied upon the IPCC for the science that came to this decision to have the endangerment finding. And actually, I have a letter from her in writing saying that's where they get their science.

Now we see that that science has been pretty well debunked. And one thing interesting about this, Wolf, is that I remember a long time ago on your program -- four years ago -- I made a speech on the Senate floor where I talked about all these scientists coming in, talking about how they can't get their side on there and the science is all rigged.

And so I gave a speech on the floor that lasted about an hour on the floor and sure enough, what is happening today in this whole debate is just what we said was happening four years ago.

The PolitiFact deck reproduced above portrays Inhofe as saying that the e-mails undermine the science of "climate change" generally.
Richert provides an infinitely better account of Inhofe's statement:

Specifically, Inhofe was talking about data that the EPA used to form its decision. It came from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body that "reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socioeconomic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change." Thousands of scientists contribute data to the organization voluntarily, including scientists at CRU, the group whose e-mails were hacked.

Got that?  Data that contributed to the EPA decision came from CRU, the organization facing questions because of the e-mails.

Richert continues:

We've been following the complicated e-mail controversy for weeks, but there have been a number of issues that make fact-checking claims about the issue difficult. To start, the e-mails were obtained illegally, which raises questions about their validity.

If the Times and PolitiFact have been following the controversy for weeks, they sure kept it a secret for a good while, but Richert makes an admirable admission regarding the difficulty of fact-checking the issue.  The problems with the validity of the e-mails would seem like the least of the problems, since CRU staffers admitted very early on that at least the majority of the documents were the real McCoy.  I suppose it makes a handy excuse for a reluctance to publish, however.  I'll note that the Times has a stricter-than-average policy on publishing anonymous reports and the like, so allowing some leeway on this point seems reasonable.

Some e-mails simply demonstrate a professional rivalry between scientists, a phenomenon that's nothing new to the profession.

"(P)rofessional rivalry" seems like a euphemistic way to refer to efforts made to prevent dissenting scientists from getting their work published in peer-reviewed journals.  Richert ought to blush at the cover she is providing on this point.  Thomas Fuller sums up the problem:

I think that they had an informal conspiracy going to pump each others' careers up, peer review each others' papers, and slam any skeptics or lukewarmers who wandered within punching range--and later, after they realised how badly they had acted, they conspired to evade the Freedom of Information Act.

And back to Richert:

Scientists are disputing the meaning of some of the language in the e-mails.

Right.  Some scientists advocating global warming, including scientists implicated in the scandal, insist that performing a "trick" to "hide the decline" is an essentially scientific practice.

Mann said the "trick" Jones referred to was placing a chart of proxy temperature records, which ended in 1980, next to a line showing the temperature record collected by instruments from that time onward. "It's hardly anything you would call a trick," Mann said, adding that both charts were differentiated and clearly marked.   (The Washington Post)

 "Mann" is Michael E. Mann, an American climate researcher with whom Jones had friendly correspondence.

Despite Mann's protestations, it is difficult to imagine how the harmless trick of putting clearly marked data on a chart would effectively "hide" anything, and equally difficult to imagine why scientists would want to hide an impression from the data, other than for nefarious reasons.  In short, it's a tough sell.

But Richert offers another difficulty with the journalistic investigation:

Finally, CRU has announced that it is conducting its own investigation into whether data were tossed out or otherwise manipulated unethically; that investigation is not complete.

Ah, what a great comfort!  If I'm ever accused of something suspicious I'll have to remember to appeal for the opportunity to conduct my own investigation as to whether I did wrong.  And let that be the end of it after I'm ready to release my findings to Ms. Richert.

From this point in the story, Richert goes on to list some of the other scientific resources that supposedly support climate change science.  This focus of her story misses the point.

Sen. Inhofe was addressing Jackson's claim that there was nothing in the e-mails that undermined the science behind the EPA's policy proposals.  Those proposals are fixated on the effects caused by mankind such as carbon dioxide emissions, though I would anticipate that methane emissions will also receive attention.  Note the disconnect from the evidence Richert places on the "climate change" side of the ledger.  All of it concerns warming tendencies.  She offers nothing that directly concerns greenhouse gases.  That constitutes a hole in this story.

Despite her earlier fair accounting of what Inhofe said, Richert matches the misleading text from the deck as she moves to conclude:

So, to say that the CRU e-mails debunk the science supporting climate change leaves out the important point that CRU isn't the only organization looking at the issue. Indeed, there are reams of data that show temperatures are increasing and that greater concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are largely to blame. On this one, Inhofe is False.

In logical terms, Richert has committed a straw man fallacy.  She misrepresents what Inhofe said and proceeds to attack the position she invented for Inhofe.  Though she mentions "greater concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases" in her conclusion, that claim appears out of the blue and lacks any support whatever in the remainder of her text.

The grades:

Catharine Richert:  F
Greg Joyce:  F

Straw men ought to be strictly forbidden in fact checking.  And key claims such as that appearing in Richert's final paragraph ought to receive evidential support.


Afters:

I sympathize with the difficulty journalists experience in covering the climate change issue.  Not only does the science present an intellectual challenge, but the hacked e-mails badly fray the journalists' traditional safety net:  expert sources such as scientists and peer-reviewed journals.

I would hesitate to offer a grade on the issue Richert tried to cover.  Interpreted charitably, Jackson may have a reasonable claim to the effect that the EPA policies have solid support apart from the CRU data.  Likewise, Sen. Inhofe may have a reasonable claim in challenging a less charitable way of interpreting Jackson.  That is not to say that either one is necessarily correct even given the most charitable interpretation.

For what it's worth, I do count myself as a skeptic of anthropogenic global warming.  I do not find the current science convincing, and the protective attitude of global warming scientists/advocates toward their data sets doesn't help.

A fact check performed without the proper tools is hardly worth the time.