The fact check of the (hard to find) claim that the heat wave of 1976 was hotter than 2022

Belgium had some hot days between July 17 and July 20. As expected, the media was full of it. I noticed that around the same time some news media companies made a comparison with the summer of 1976, putting forward that it was hotter now than in the summer of 1976 and, although the number of hot days were much lower, that this doesn’t mean that its severity is being exaggerated by them.

The Flemish public broadcasting company (VRT) did a similar thing and made it into a fact check format. Here is the title of the fact check (translated from Dutch):

CHECK – No, the hot summer of 1976 was not hotter and doesn’t show that climate change doesn’t exist

I naively expected that the fact checker actually found some examples of claims that the summer of 1976 was hotter than 2022 and that this observation somehow would call climate change into question. The fact check linked to four examples that seemingly illustrate such claims, but following those links that isn’t the case…

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Skepticalscience takes a … pro truth pledge?

It was not only a long time since I blogged lately, it was also a very long time since I visited the skepticalscience website. This weekend, I landed on the skepticalscience website and, looking at the right sidebar on their website, I noticed this:

A pro truth pledge?!?!?

Did skepticalscience really took a … pro truth pledge?!?!

You mean … as in … pledging to write … well … the truth?

That seemed odd to me. Throughout the years, I came to know skepticalscience as not very truth-minded. The articles are one-sided and they are not wary of presenting opposing view in a misleading way, heck, they even were caught several times downright fabricating things.

Climate misinformation having little or no effect on liberals?

It has been a while since last post. I am learning new skills and this has a negative effect on the post frequency. I am still in the learning process, but I couldn’t resist when I saw this list of quotes in a tweet from John Cook (my emphasis):

These quotes are a collection extracted from an Independent article on “The spread of climate denial on Facebook”, which contained some quotes from John Cook. These are all interesting quotes, but I will limit myself in this post to the first quote (yellow marking):

Through his research, Dr Cook has found that climate misinformation that is spread on social media disproportionately affects conservatives and has little impact on liberals.

I can understand that conservatives and liberals have different worldviews, therefor react differently to the same information, but there is much more nuance to it than that.

Gone by 2020: worse or better than thought?

This is part 8 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1, part2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7 if you haven’t already.

Back to a previous series on the prediction when the glaciers in Glacier National Park would be gone. In hat series, I focused primarily on two specific predictions (with the end date of 2020 and 2030) and how these were presented to the public. I knew there were other predictions around, but at that time I was not particularly interested in them, so didn’t search for these specifically.

In the meanwhile, I came across the NationalReview article “Beware the Boogeyman Alarm” by Kyle Smith and that contains this interesting paragraph (my emphasis):

The doctor’s analogy, skeptic style

This post will build on previous post. I ended that post saying that trust is key. It is not possible to comprehend the complete climate change picture, so in the end we will all have to trust, skeptics and alarmists alike. That trust is (mis)used in the doctor analogy. It goes like this:

Premise 1: You trust your doctor on health issues
Premise 2: Climate scientists are the doctors of the climate
Conclusion: You should trust climate scientists on climate issues

There are several problems with this analogy as I explained in some previous posts on this topic. The two sciences are actually not comparable, nor quantitatively, nor qualitatively. The doctor’s analogy therefor gives a false sense of certainty. In those posts, I focused on premise 2, making the case that both can’t be compared and therefor the analogy doesn’t fly in reality.

This time I will focus on premise 1, by looking at climate change communication by the experts and exploring whether this would warrant the same trust as we have in doctors. I will do this by invoking the doctor’s analogy myself, but this time in skeptic style…

All gone by the year 2020: what does it matter anyway?

This is part 7 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1, part2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6 if you haven’t already.

The last six posts were about the prediction that the glaciers in Glacier National Park would be gone by 2020. I also delved deeper in the relation of this prediction with a similar prediction that the glaciers would be gone by 2030, making the case that the 2020 prediction was an update of the 2030 prediction (contrary to how it is reported in most media).

Now you could object that this looks like nit-picking. Glaciers are shrinking anyway, that is also clear from previous post, so what does it matter whether someone made a wrong prediction of how long the remaining glaciers would last. The discussion whether the glaciers in Glacier National Park would be gone by 2020 or 2030 seems small change compared to the big picture that they will be gone in the future.

I could somewhat understand such objection, but I think there is much more to it than that.

All gone by the year 2020: is observed glacier melt the basis for the prediction?

This is part 6 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1, part2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 if you haven’t already.

In a previous post, I walked down memory lane to the time I was about 19 years old. In this post, I will go back to the more tender age of 14 and my first trip abroad. It was a trip to Switzerland on the health insurance plan of my parents. Its intention was to give the working class youth the opportunity to breathe in the pure mountain air of Switzerland. We were a bunch of kids of the same age and, as you would expect, there were a lot of outdoor activities like sports that we could chose from.

Not being that much into sports and a more nature-minded boy, I often joined the hiking group that did nature walks in the vicinity of the center were we stayed over. At one point, there was the opportunity to see a glacier. I had learned about glaciers in school and was eager to see one. It was not that close by and after a stiff walk we arrived at the glacier. Boy, was I disappointed. We saw some melting ice chunks and a small patch of ice stretching along the mountain. Although it was nice to see some ice in that time of the year, it was a real anti-climax.

One of the guides then said that a lot of glaciers were shrinking and that this glacier was no exception. This was in the mid 1970s.

I was reminded of this scene from my youth when reading this paragraph in the Hall & Fagre paper “Modeled Climate-Induced Glacier Change in Glacier National Park, 1850–2100” (my emphasis):

All gone by the year 2020: Wikipedia rewrites history (2)

This is part 5 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1, part2, part 3 and part 4 if you haven’t already

This post is a follow-up on a previous post in this series, more specifically the post of Wikipedia rewriting history by suggesting that the 2030 prediction was a “later estimate”, following the 2020 prediction. Contrary to the reality that the 2020 estimate was an update of the 2030 estimate and the 2030 estimate was in fact rehashed after the 2020 claim was abandoned (probably because it became clear that the 2020 estimate would fail).

My take was that the Wikipedia contributor found that the 2030 estimate was made in an later snapshot of a National Park Service webpage and didn’t look at the estimates in the snapshots before 2010, therefor went from the assumption that the 2030 prediction was a later estimate. I think that this still holds, but that there is more to it than that.

All gone by the year 2020: entering the wrong data gets the right answer

This is part 4 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1, part2 and part 3 if you haven’t already

Let me first tell you a story of a young student. Fast rewind to the beginning of the 1980s and this young, eager student took a practical exam chemistry. The exam consisted of some questions about lab practices and one practical test that had to be performed in the lab. That test was important because it counted for half of the points.

The easiest test that the students learned in that year was determining the amount of iron in a (self-prepared) iron salt solution. The procedure was pretty simple, it was by far the shortest test and the final calculation was also straight forward. Every student would get a different assignment, so all the students were dreaming of getting that specific question as their assignment.

At the beginning of the exam, the students had to draw a small piece of paper (with the name of the test that they had to perform) out of a box. When this young student drew his piece of paper out of the box, he read … determining the amount of iron in an iron salt solution.

Yabba dabba doooooo!

Imagine the joy he felt, realizing that this exam would be a walk in the park… He looked forward getting a good grade.

All gone by the year 2020: Wikipedia rewrites history (1)

This is part 3 in the series on the prediction that glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by 2020. You might want to see to part 1 and part2 if you haven’t already

The title of this page has been updated to reflect an later update.

During my research on the “All gone by the year 2020” prediction, I also encountered the Wikipedia page about the Glacier National Park (U.S.). My attention was immediately drawn to the sequence of the predicted estimates when glaciers would be gone according to a Wikipedia contributor (my emphasis):

Based on the warming trend of the early 2000s, scientists had estimated that the park’s remaining glaciers would melt by 2020;[52] however, a later estimate stated that the glaciers may be gone by 2030.[5]

As it is stated, it is seems that the “glaciers would melt by 2020” prediction came first and was followed by the later “gone by 2030” prediction. I went through a lot of material about those predictions in the last week and this statement is in fact the reverse of what happened in reality. The 2020 estimate was a 2009 update of the 2030 estimate that was made originally made in 2003. This post will explain how the Wikipedia contributor managed to switch the two.