Steven Crowley and the Echo Chamber of Climate Change Disinformation
Every once in a while I like to watch or read an opinion piece from a climate change “skeptic”. Today I came across a video from a youtuber named Steven Crowder. If you’ve never heard of him, your republican friend probably has. His videos repeatedly get over a million views and this one has received over 100k since last night. The egregious false statements made combined with the massive audience made me really disheartened about how effectively climate change disinformation is being disseminated. In just 40 minutes, I found over 25 blatantly false statements but more importantly was the pervasive idea that the scientific process is broken and subject to fear mongering for profit. Here’s the factual and cited information, just in case you run into some one espousing similar falsehoods.
You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vqlq3wsWrI
1. 01:10 To start off, Dr. Moore has been disavowed by Greenpeace and several prominent scientists. He has been a spokesman for the nuclear power industry and logging industry through the BC Forest Alliance since the 1990s. He also has been funded by Monsanto and Weyerhaeuser and has continually published works that specifically propagandize these corporations. He is a lobbyist and a spokesperson, not a scientist. His PhD is in ecology and he has never published any peer reviewed climate science papers.
2. 02:50 Cherry production in Michigan is actually decreasing as a result of climate change. Earlier blooms and more destructive spring frosts have led to huge die offs such as the one in 2012 that took out nearly the entire crop. Studies from Michigan State University have shown that this will only get worse (Winkler, 2017)
3. 03:10 Research out of Columbia University, GRISA, GLERL, and the IPCC all point to the great lakes having a decreasing water level due to climate change. The lakes could lose 0.2 to 2.5 meters in the next 100 years due to increased evaporation outpacing increased precipitation. This is combined with increasing temperatures and polluted runoff that has increased algal blooms and decreased yearly ice cover.
4. 03:30 Analysis by Estrada et al., 2015 has shown that increases in hurricane damages are not solely from socioeconomic changes and that climate change is responsible for an additional $2–14 billion in damages in the US per year.
5. 04:50 Climate change can cause localized cooling. Most notably is in western Europe where increased melting from Greenland will cause a migration of the Gulf Stream and a diversion of heat southwards. Despite this, global temperatures are warming to beyond levels we’ve seen in the past 4 million years.
6. 05:36 Picking out the 1960s and 70s as cooling is still cherry-picking. Global trends in temperature since recorded measurements and steadily increasing and temperatures in the 1960s were still 0.25C higher than they were in the late 19th century.
7. 06:36 Climate scientists have become more geared toward activism because the situation is so dire and youtube’s global warming links are to help the public see how climate “skeptics” are contradicting established facts in a harmful way.
8. 07:52 The hoax paper mentioned about penises was published in a journal called Cogent Social Sciences which has been noted for being a predatory publishing company run by Taylor and Francis. The journal is not ranked on SJR and has no connection with credible climate science journals. It’s worth noting that the paper was nearly immediately redacted and has initially rejected by a number of journals. Peer review for credible journals is still done completely anonymously and exclusively by scientists, not journalists. Revealing that you are reviewing a paper by your “buddy” will result in professional discretization and university review.
9. 09:50 Berry crops have also decreased due to climate change with 7 out of 12 species experiencing economically significant declines (Hupp et al., 2015).
10. 10:45 Increased atmospheric CO2 does increase plant productivity. Studies from Nature put the value for 600ppm CO2 at a 30–40% increase in photosynthesis. This effect is seen to a much lesser extent for C4 plants such as corn. Plants growing in these conditions also decrease their protein and essential mineral concentrations by 5–14% and require substantially more fertilizers. Even with potential increases in photosynthesis, plant production is more than likely going to decrease due do climate change’s effects on soil degradation, water supply, and heat stress. The 2000 ppm that Dr. Moore suggests would actually be a health risk to humans causing nausea, headaches, and drowsiness.
11. 13:35 The fact that CO2 decreased in recent paleo records only proves that increases in CO2 are human-caused. During the Last Glacial Maximum CO2 levels were at 180–190ppm (Gerhart and Ward, 2010) which is well above the lower limit for plant photosynthesis of 50–170ppm (Tolbert et al., 1995).
12. 17:15 There’s no reason why a gas of low concentration in the atmosphere wouldn’t have a large effect of climate. Hundreds of papers have pointed to the contrary. CO2 has a large effect because of its strong ability to trap the sun’s incoming energy. By increase in CO2 by 40% in our atmosphere, this effect is significantly bolstered. The sun’s output only fluctuates by 0.1% due to sunspot presents and is currently decreasing in brightness. These variations cannot explain the rapidly increasing temperatures we’re observing. The exponential nature of the warming is due to a number of positive feedback loops associated with climate change including the loss of artic sea ice.
13. 20:03 The amount of funding to the Green movement and climate focused politicians is astronomically less than funding to the fossil fuel industry, logging industry, and republican politicians. If the media actually wanted to get money from sensationalizing climate change, you’d actually see reporters mentioning it more than the couple dozen times per year they currently do.
14. 21:32 I’m not sure why they put up the slide showing that oil and gas companies benefited from the tax cut. It only aids the above point. The fossil fuel industry has received over $5.3 trillion in subsidies compared to the $88 billion in subsidies to renewable energy companies. The cherry story that Steven mentions is only a one-time event published in a local paper and does not have any peer reviewed research to back that it indicates a trend. The so called “clean coal” that Moore mentions also has been shown to increase concentrations of PM2.5, NOx, SO2, and mercury in the atmosphere in addition to the extensive CO2 it emits (EPA).
15. 23:43 Analysis by the World Bank found that climate change has had a significant effect on Zimbabwe’s agriculture. Increases in temperature and decreased precipitation alone are expected to cost the country $0.8 to 1.4 billion by 2100.
16. 24:20 Steven points out that the Paris Agreement would cost the world billions of dollars. This is true, however it ignores the fact that the climate change being addressed by the Paris Agreement would cost the world an estimated $20 trillion. He also says that it would result in millions of lives lost in third world countries. This is far lower than the mortality rate from climate change. Estimates of heat related deaths alone are expected to increase by 1.5 million people per year by the end of the century because of climate change (Carleton et al., 2018). Accounting for deaths from flooding, increased disease, increased conflict, and water shortages, climate change is expected to take tens of millions of lives per year, most of which will be in developing countries.
17. 24:32 China is prioritizing renewable energy. It currently produces half of the world’s new solar energy cells resulting in an increase of 53 gigawatts of new renewable energy from a $126 billion investment. The Paris Agreement restricts China to reaching its peak emissions by 2030 but due to the large investments in renewable energy, it’s expected to reach that goal by 2020. Sweden, Lithuania, Morocco and Norway are also surpassing Paris Agreement goals.
18. 25:49 US emissions of CO2 have gone down since 2005 (largely due to Obama era regulations) more than any other country however per capita remissions reductions are much lower than other countries. The US is still the largest per capita emitter of CO2 and emissions are expected to increase in 2018.
19. 26:10 The reason why hydropower is not the ideal renewable energy source is because dams can wreak havoc on rivers. They decimate fish, frog, and riparian vegetation populations (Wingle et al., 2007) and cause extensive downstream erosion due to sediment trapping (Finger et al., 2006). Decreased rainfall in many regions of the US also make the further development of hydropower no longer economical for most of the country.
20. 27:05 Climate change activists are not calling for single energy source solutions either. The ideal energy grid would combine extensive solar and wind resources with existing hydropower and nuclear power plants. Oil and gas would be used until battery technology can make up for the ability of fossil fuels to match spurious energy demand fluctuations. Both sides are calling the other side radical.
21. 30:30 Climate change has and continues to have a significant role at decreasing the extent of the Great Barrier Reef. While the coral has a remarkable ability to heal, climate stressors will cause the coverage to decrease to 26% of current extent by 2050 under the Paris Agreement goals and to 3% of current extent under business as usual (Wolff et al., 2018). This extensive bleaching can easily be seen in aerial photographs, underwater imagery, or by anyone swimming off the coast of Australia.
22. 31:53 Recent studies have collected water samples showing that the Pacific garbage patch has grown to 79 thousand tonnes or 2.3 times the size of Texas and is mostly composed to (visible) fishing nets (Lebreton et al., 2018). Composite Worldview satellite imagery and computer modeling is able to determine the size of the garbage patch. The extensive garbage on Henderson Island in the Pitcairn Islands that Moore mentioned is visible on Google Earth. You can check it out yourself at 24.413S, 128.29W although the image resolution is poor and the extensive garbage is seen easily seen in a number of on the ground photographs and videos. The reason why plastic is a problem is because it is nearly impossible to break down biologically. Cows (nor their gut bacteria, which doesn’t contain fungi btw) cannot digest plastic. It can cause deadly bloating.
23. 34:35 There is not scientific research suggesting that gypsy communities in Eastern Europe dispose of trash in a less responsible way than their neighboring communities. This statement seems to be predicated on racial biases.
24. 36:15 Of the 10 polar bear populations currently being monitored, 3 are declining and 6 are stable (PBSG). Sea ice extent is rapidly decreasing causing polar bear habitat to be lost. This is expected to cause significant declines in polar bear populations in the future.
25. 36:57 And maybe most importantly, just because something isn’t in your backyard, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Experts can provide credible information that you can pour over yourself and question their results. The scientific method is a universal right and can be taken up by anyone. Scientists make their findings public to serve the public and we spend our lives making sure that the statements we make are as accurate as possible.