Trump climate change adviser provides CBC with dubious sources
On Wednesday, CBC Radio's Carol Off interviewed Donald Trump's climate change adviser, Robert Walker, former chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and she seems to have got under his skin.
Walker disputes the assertion that the vast majority of climate scientists believe the evidence of human-caused global warming.
Off quoted Walker as having said that only about half of scientists actually agree with climate change.
He responded that he was talking only about climatologists, not all scientists. If you take the climatologist group, alone, without other disciplines, including social sciences, Walker said, you will see that there is significant dissent from the so-called consensus.
However, when asked to provide a source for that assertion, the Trump adviser could not, and made a vague reference to something he had read, somewhere.
After the interview, Walker sent Carol Off's program, As It Happens, an e-mail, in which he cited three sources: an organization called Open Source Systems, Science and Solutions; another called the National Association of Scholars; and something he called the Center for Climate Research.
To start with the last group, Walker said it had showed that of 4,000 research abstracts on global warming only one per cent attributed it exclusively to human causes.
The Center Walker cited may exist. If so, it does not seem to have any online presence.
<snip>
As for the entity known as Open Source Systems, Science and Solutions, its published material vigorously supports the scientific consensus on climate change. It does not in any way whatsoever endorse the assertions Walker made in the As It Happens interview and in his subsequent e-mail.
In the section of Open Source's web site dedicated to myths versus facts on global warming it says:
"This news and analysis section addresses substance of arguments such as 'global warming is a hoax,' 'global warming is a fiction,' 'global warming is created to make money for Al Gore.' The main fallacy noted is that most arguments are facts out of context while others are simply false representations. When the facts pertaining to the arguments are viewed in context relevance becomes obvious. The data clearly indicates global warming is happening and is human caused."
One has to assume that in providing CBC with these sources the U.S. politician and senior Trump adviser assumed nobody would check them.
He was wrong.
