Global Warming Denial Propaganda
A recent paper by Swally, et al. was seized upon by global warming denier websites as proving that global warming was not happening.
But the interesting thing here is how global warming deniers so strongly embrace this one bit of data and then proceed to a conclusion that there is no global warming at all. Now in fact the paper does seem to support that ice is growing in East Antarctica, but this datum doesn't exculpate the overwhelming evidence of global warming. This kind of practice, using one piece of data to deny global warming while ignoring all other evidence for global warming is called "card stacking". It is not a logical fallacy because the cited datum happens to be true, but
MELTDOWN MYTH: Antarctic ice growing is just the first EVIDENCE global warming is NOT REALSo what is really happening?
One thing that Zwally’s study does highlight is how difficult it is to nail what is happening in East Antarctica because the signal is small and contaminated by unwanted effects that are as large or even larger. Zwally et al get a different result from previous studies because they make a different set of assumptions. Those assumptions are, by their nature, subjective and difficult, without additional evidence, to corroborate. There are, however, other lines of evidence that suggest that Antarctica is unlikely to have been gaining mass in the last few decades. That would, for example, make closing the sea level budget a whole lot harder (that is, making the sum of the sinks and sources match the observed rate of sea level rise). One other thing is certain: West Antarctica has been losing mass at an increasing rate since the 1990s and, irrespective of what is happening further East, that trend looks set to continue. Going to the other end of the Earth, the Greenland ice sheet has also been losing mass at an accelerating rate since around 1995. Greenland is now the single biggest source of mass to the oceans. These trends at both poles are huge signals that are unequivocal and uncontested.
But the interesting thing here is how global warming deniers so strongly embrace this one bit of data and then proceed to a conclusion that there is no global warming at all. Now in fact the paper does seem to support that ice is growing in East Antarctica, but this datum doesn't exculpate the overwhelming evidence of global warming. This kind of practice, using one piece of data to deny global warming while ignoring all other evidence for global warming is called "card stacking". It is not a logical fallacy because the cited datum happens to be true, but
is a propaganda technique that seeks to manipulate audience perception of an issue by emphasizing one side and repressing another.
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