Everything Ted Cruz Said In NPR Climate Interview Was A Lie; Links, Annotation To Every Lie
Last edited Sat Dec 12, 2015, 12:03 PM - Edit history (1)
On December 9th, National Public Radio broadcast an interview between NPR’s Steve Inskeep and Senator Ted Cruz on the subject of climate change. Below is an annotated transcript of that interview with my [bracketed] responses to the consistently false scientific claims made by Senator Cruz. Effectively, every single scientific point he made was wrong – a classic “Gish Gallop” of long-debunked talking points of those who dispute the unambiguous scientific evidence of climate change. In these bracketed annotations I have provided a few hyperlinks to each of the myths he repeats. I have tried not to address the many other political and ideological points he made about climate change and scientists during this interview, though a few seem to have snuck in.
INSKEEP: What do you think about what is seen as a broad scientific consensus that there is man-caused climate change?
TED CRUZ: Well, I believe that public policy should follow the science and follow the data. I am the son of two mathematicians and computer programmers and scientists. In the debate over global warming, far too often politicians in Washington – and for that matter, a number of scientists receiving large government grants – disregard the science and data and instead push political ideology. This is a classic ad hominem attack accusing the entire climate science community of pushing ideology for money, while also painting “government grants” for science as political. There is no basis for this. You and I are both old enough to remember 30, 40 years ago, when, at the time, we were being told by liberal politicians and some scientists that the problem was global cooling… This is a classic and false claim. There was never any significant scientific agreement that global cooling was a threat: indeed, even in the ‘70s, the scientific consensus was that the risk was warming.
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INSKEEP: There was a moment when some people said that.
CRUZ: That we were facing the threat of an incoming ice age. False. As noted above, there were a very small number of scientific papers discussing cooling, and even they did not talk about a coming “ice age.” The few media stories about this have been repeatedly seized on by skeptics and deniers as evidence that scientists were wrong decades ago, and thus must still be wrong today. Here is a good summary of the “myth” of global cooling that Senator Cruz is still promulgating, despite it having been debunked long ago. And their solution to this problem is that we needed massive government control of the economy, the energy sector and every aspect of our lives. [False: Cruz uses a false scientific claim to put forth a false political claim. Very few scientists offer opinions about specific policies to address climate change, but when they do – as is their right as citizens – their policy preferences are diverse.] But then, as you noted, the data didn’t back that up. So then, many of those same liberal politicians and a number of those same scientists switched their theory to global warming. [False. But even if it was true, switching positions and testing new theories based on new scientific data is exactly the way the scientific method works.]
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CRUZ: So let me ask you a question, Steve. Is there global warming, yes or no?
INSKEEP: According to the scientists, absolutely.
CRUZ: I’m asking you.
INSKEEP: Sure.
CRUZ: OK, you are incorrect, actually. The scientific evidence doesn’t support global warming. False: Inskeep is correct and Cruz is wrong. The scientific evidence unambiguously shows warming. This is the position of every single professional scientific society and every single National Academy of Sciences on the planet. Here is a partial list. For the last 18 years, the satellite data – we have satellites that monitor the atmosphere. The satellites that actually measure the temperature showed no significant warming whatsoever. False: every single method used to evaluate global, regional, and local temperatures shows warming, including satellites. See, for example, here http://skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere-advanced.htm
INSKEEP: I’ll just note that NASA analyzes that same data differently. But we can go on.
CRUZ: But no, they don’t. You can go and look at the data. [False: Senator Cruz is wrong again (See Figure below): Here are the data and NASA’s analysis clearly showing warming.] And by the way, this hearing – we have a number of scientists who are testifying about the data. But here’s the key point. Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven. [False: This also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of science and the scientific method. Atmospheric and climatological science is well understood and produces hypotheses that are constantly tested, confirmed, refuted, and regularly revised. And as it improves, the concerns about global climate change have consistently strengthened, not declined. See, for example, the 40 years of reports on this issue from the US National Academy of Sciences.]
CRUZ: But no, they don’t. You can go and look at the data. False: Senator Cruz is wrong again (See Figure below): Here are the data and NASA’s analysis clearly showing warming. And by the way, this hearing – we have a number of scientists who are testifying about the data. But here’s the key point. Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven. False: This also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of science and the scientific method. Atmospheric and climatological science is well understood and produces hypotheses that are constantly tested, confirmed, refuted, and regularly revised. And as it improves, the concerns about global climate change have consistently strengthened, not declined. See, for example, the 40 years of reports on this issue from the US National Academy of Sciences.
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http://scienceblogs.com/significantfigures/index.php/2015/12/09/everything-senator-ted-cruz-said-about-climate-change-in-this-npr-interview-was-wrong/
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