Being Objective on Climate Change

　　A.Last week，Craig Rucker,a climate-change skeptic and the executive director of a nonprofit organization called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow(CFACT)，tweeted a quotation supposedly taken from a 1922 edition of the Washington Post：“Within a few years it is predicted due to ice melt the sea will rise&make most coastal cities uninhabitable.”The intent，of course，was to poke fun at current headlines about climate change.

　　B.Rucker’s organization is a member ofthe Cooler Heads Coalition，an umbrella organization operated by the Competitive Enterprise Institute，a nonprofit that prides itself on its opposition to environmental ists.Rucker himself is part of a network of bloggers，op-cd writers，and policy-shop executives who argue that climate change is either a hoax or all example of left-wing hysteria.Surfacing old newspaper clips is one of their favorite games.They also make substantive arguments about climate policy,but the sniping may be more effective.There is no stronger rhetorical tool than ridicule.

　　C.In this case，Ruckcr’s ridicule seems misplaced.After spending a few minutes poking around online，1 was able to find both the Washington Post article and the longer SourCe material that it came from—a weather report issued by the U.S.consul in Bergen，Norway,and sent to the State Department on october 1 0，1 922.The report didn’t say anything about coasts being inundated.This isn’t surprising.Scientists wete smart back then，too,and they knew that melting sea ice wouldn’t appreciably raise sea levels.any more than a melting ice cube raises the level of water in a glass.

　　D.Rucker ultimately corrected his tweet once commenters pointed out the misquote.Through Twitter,he informed me that he had taken the line from a Washington Times op—ed by Richard Rahn，a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.When I contacted Rahn’s office.a press representative acknowledged that Rahn had copied the quote from other bloggers and columnists;the fabricated sentence appears in articles at reason.corn and texasgopvote.corn.The fabricated line seems to have been inserted around 2011.but the original article has been circulating online since 2007.

　　E. The statement about rising sea levels aside，1 922 really was a strange period in the Svalbard archipelago.the area described by the weather report.The islands lie halfway between Norway and the North Pole,at a latitude that puts them several hundred miles farther north than Barrow,alaska.“The Arctic seems to be warming up.”the report read.In August of that year,a geologist near the island of Spitsbergen sailed as far north as eighty-one degrees.twenty.nine minutes in ice-free water.This was highly unusual.The previous several summers had likewise been warrn.Seal populations had moved farther north，and formerly unseen stretches of coast were now accessible.

　　F.What are we to take from this historical evidence?A central tenet for Rucker and his colleagues is mat today’s sea.ice retreat。warming surface temperatures，and similar observations are short-lived anomalies of a kind that often happened in the past—and that overzealous scientists and gullible media are quick to drum up crises where none exist.Favorite examples include numerous newspaper articles from the nineteen.seventies that predicted the advent of a new ice age.In fact.it's possible to find articles from nearly every decade of the past century that seem to imply information about the climate that turned out to be premature or wrong.

　　G.The 1922 article has been quoted repeatedly by Rucker’s comrades-in-arms since its 2007 rebirth in the Washington Times.For nearly that long，scientists have been objecting.Gavin Schmidt，a climate modeler and the deputy director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies，points out that what was an anomaly in 1922 is now the norm：the waters near Spitsbergen are clear of ice at the end of every summer.More important，long-term temperature and sea-ice records indicate that the dramatic sea-ice retreat in the early nineteen.twenties was short-lived.It also occurred locally around svalbard—the unusual conditions didn’t even encompass the whole Norwegian Sea，let alone the rest of the Arctic.

　　H. 0ver the weekend，after retracting his previous tweet，Rucker posted a link to a blog item about a different article.this one a 1932 New York Times story.The eighty-year-old headline reads，“The Next Great Deluge Forecast By Science：Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of the Seas and Flood the Continents.”That one sounded juicy,and，indeed，this time the text was correct：that really is what the headline said.Ironically,the lcad researcher cited in the piece was a German scientist named Alfred Wegener,who has sometimes been considered a hero of climate-change deniers for a completely different reason.Wegener is known for proposing the phenomenon of continental drift starting around the First Wbrid War,The idea was ridiculed before gaining acceptance in the nineteen-sixties，once

　　ample evidence had been amassed.Wegener’s lifc story,then，is used to support the idea that the small number of researchers in the field who downplay the risk of anthropogenic climate change will one day prevail.

　　I.In reality,the potential for anthropogenic global warming was being discussed earlier than continental drift.and took even longer to gain wide acceptance.The versatile Professor Wegener was a geophysicist and polar researcher who spent much of his career studying meteorology in Greenland，and trying to unlock the secrets of the Earth’s past.His elevated place in the current climate-change debate is

　　abstracted from history.

　　J.In any case，it’s not clear that the bloggers linking to the 1932 article read much beyond the headline.Thc article does discuss a collapse of the ice sheets that would raise sea levels by more than a hundred feet—but it says that event lies thirty to forty thousand years in the future.There’s nothing wrong with examining old newspaper articles for clues about climate conditions in the past.Legitimate climate researchers look at historical documents of all kinds.However,a good-faith effort to arrive at the truth would not rely on cherry-picking catchy headlines.It would require considering the context and looking at all the evidence.At the very least.it wouldn’t allow for deliberate distortions.A prediction that the ice caps might melt by the year 42，000 is hardly all example of climate alarmism.

　　46.Unlike melting ice in the glass，the melting sea ice cannot easily raise sea level.

　　47.Rucker maintains that the climate.change is just a terrible fantasy of the left-wing or even a totally distrustful matter.

　　48.It is fair to search for every piece of evidence to approach the truth without distortion.

　　49.As for Rucker,the clear purpose of tweeting this quotation is to laugh at the articles about climate change.

　　50.The various unusual phenomena about climate change are merely non-exist alarms claimed by the scientists and media，would be short-lived.

　　51.The drastic sea-ice melt occurred around Svalbard was only local and limited.

　　52.It is normal for the waters at northern latitude 8 1 degrees，29 minutes to be covered with ice.

　　53.It is embraced that the number of climate-change researchers will be multiplied one day.

　　54.It is ironic for the leading figure of climate-change opponents to quote this piece.

　　55.In reality,the universal information in articles about climate change is eventually proved to be unbelievable.

　　46.Unlike melting ice in the glass，the melting sea ice can not easily raise sea level.与杯中的融冰不同，海中的融冰不会使海面快速升高。

　　47.Rucker maintains that the climate change is just a terrible fantasy of the left-wing or even a totally distrustful matter.洛克认为气候变化的论点不过是左派的糟糕的幻想，甚至根本就是一个骗局。

　　48.Itisfairto searchfor everypiece ofevidence to approach the truth without distortion.努力寻找证据，真实地靠近真相，这点是不可争议的

　　49.As for Rucker,the clear purpose of tweeting this quotation is to laugh at the articles about climate change.洛克微博这条引语的用意很明显是在嘲笑有关气候变化的文章。

　　50.The various unusual phenomena about climate change are merely non.exist alarms claimed by the scientists and media，would be short-lived.各种有关气候变化的非正常现象不过是短暂的，是科学家和媒体所宣称的，本不存在的危言耸听。

　　51.The drastic sea-ice melt occurred around Sval bard was only local and limited.发生在斯瓦尔巴特群岛周围剧烈的海冰融化现象只是局部的。

　　52.It is normal for the waters at northern latitude 81 degrees，29 minutes to be covered with ice.照理说，北纬81度29分的水域应该是结冰的。

　　53.It is embraced that the number of climate-change researchers will be multiplied one day.终有一天，对气候变化研究的人员数量会不断增加。

　　54.It is ironic for the leading figure ofclimate-change opponents to quote this piece.作为气候变化反对者的英雄人物，引用这篇文章是很讽刺的。

　　55.In reality.the universal information in articles about climate change is eventually proved to be unbelievable.事实上，大量关于气候变化的信息最后都被证实是不可信的。