Dr. Katharine Hayhoe on FRONTLINE’s ‘Climate of Doubt': “[T]he 2000s was the warmest decade on record, the 1990s was the warmest before that, the 1980s before that, and most of us in the field expect…” [Fact Checking]
POSTED FOR COMMENTARY BY SCIENTISTS:
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe on PBS FRONTLINE’s “Climate of Doubt..” 10/23/2012
“So the 2000s was the warmest decade on record, the 1990s was the warmest decade before that, the 1980s before that, and most of us in field of climate science expect — but we can’t be sure — we expect the 2010s to be warmer than the 2000s.”
Source: “Climate of Doubt,” PBS FRONTLINE series by John Hockenberry, 10/23/2012, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/climate-of-doubt/ (quote and above image at 18:00-18:20).
Author: Michael Quirke
Michael Quirke is the executive director of CCNF and is serving as the Forum's journalist. He first began work on an early beta version of this website in 2010, shortly after his military service and before starting law school at the University of Houston Law Center. He helped form the CCNF nonprofit under the leadership of its founding board members during his second year of law school and has been leading the growth of the organization as its executive director and covering the discussion and debate as the Forum's journalist ever since. In late 2014, he joined the organization's board. His vision for this journalism project is simple: Establish an open Socratic forum for scientists, give each scientist complete independence on the platform, encourage Socratic inquiry by all and ask questions, and impartially report what transpires; and then, once a good foundation in the science is set, host and cover a bipartisan policy debate by a diverse group of experts on what can or should be done about climate change as a nation based on the science established by the scientists. He hopes you join him on this intellectual journey.
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1:09 pm
I likewise expect the 2010’s to be the warmest decade. For global glacier mass balance the 1990’s was worse than the 1980’s and the 2000’s were worse than the 1990’s. As I am currently working on the section I author on alpine glaciers, for BAMS State of the Climate 2013, it is apparent that global glacier mass balance will be negative for the 23rd consecutive year.
4:56 pm
When citing a statistic like this, I like to ask the question: what if the next data point fails to fall your way? Does or should it invalidate your argument?
Dr. Hayhoe has said this properly. While the warmth of each successive decade is indicative of global warming, global warming only enhances the odds of each decade being warmer, it doesn’t guarantee it.
Too often, people will say that the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s and the 2000s were warmer than the 1990s, and leave it at that…as though that simple fact was supposed to prove something. What if the 2010s are not warmer than the 2000s? I bet we’ll then hear about how the 2000s are warmer than the 1900s.