KHOW's Boyles failed to challenge GOP lawmaker Lundberg's global warming misinformation

Summary: On his February 13 broadcast, 630 KHOW-AM host Peter Boyles did not challenge misinformation from his guest, Republican state Rep. Kevin Lundberg, regarding global warming and climate change science. The two were discussing Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter's Colorado Climate Action Plan, which contains the accurate statement, disputed by Lundberg, that "[e]leven of the past 12 years were the warmest on record worldwide since 1850."

Discussing Gov. Bill Ritter's (D) Colorado Climate Action Plan on his February 13 broadcast, 630 KHOW-AM's Peter Boyles uncritically allowed his guest, state Rep. Kevin Lundberg (R), to refer misleadingly to an August 2007 correction of U.S. temperature records made by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Lundberg asserted that "a spike in temperatures" in the 1920s and 1930s contradicts the observation he cited from the plan that "11 of the past 12 years have been the warmest since records started in 1850." In fact, as Colorado Media Matters has noted, NASA's revision affected annual temperature rankings for the United States only; the climate plan's statement refers to "worldwide" rankings, which NASA's revision did not change.

Lundberg also stated, referring in part to Colorado State University professor emeritus of atmospheric science William Gray, that a 2007 hearing on global warming he conducted through the Republican Study Committee of Colorado featured presentations by "Dr. Gray from CSU, and somebody from the Competitive Enterprise Institute." Neither Lundberg nor Boyles noted -- as Media Matters for America has documented -- that while scientific organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) share the consensus view that, as stated in a June 2006 NAS report, "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming" of the planet, Gray claims that global warming is a "hoax" and that rising global temperatures are part of "a natural cycle." Similarly, neither Lundberg nor Boyles noted that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has received funding from the oil, gas, and automotive industries and that it has a documented history of distorting climate science.

Boyles referred to the statement Lundberg reportedly made at a February 11 event sponsored by the "free market" Independence Institute that the Colorado Climate Action Plan is "predicated on junk science."

From the February 13 broadcast of 630 KHOW-AM's The Peter Boyles Show:

BOYLES: So I love that you called this stuff, [Gov.] Bill Ritter's Climate Action Plan, "junk science." Look up there in Park County right now -- that's that global warming.

LUNDBERG: Well, I tell you, I used those, that term, which is -- you know, it's got kind of a hard, strong sound bite, if you will -- because I read the plan, and what I saw in it was not a serious scientific discussion. I saw them taking out little, you might call them populist science, or political science comments, to try to prove the point. Because this is all predicated on this assumption that A) It is man-made CO2 that's driving this warming that we have seen in the last two, three decades. But B) We can change it by, you know, altering our driving patterns, et cetera. You know, they -- here's why I said, called it that. Right at the top of the list they say 11 of the past 12 years have been the warmest since records started in 1850. Well, there was a NASA report a few years ago that came out and said that, and then they corrected it --

BOYLES: That's right.

LUNDBERG: -- because they discovered in the '20 and '30s there was a spike in temperatures as well. And so, it's been warm recently; it was warm back then. There was a cooling trend between. I'm -- my big point here is, we need to get down to the serious facts of the discussion and, you know, let's have the scientific debate first before we move this into public policy.

Contrary to Lundberg's misrepresentation, the Colorado Climate Action Plan made an accurate statement about the historical rankings of worldwide temperatures:

B. Impacts of Climate Change on Colorado,

Present and Future

We are already seeing the impacts in Colorado from the global average temperature increase of 1.4 degrees F.

Eleven of the past 12 years were the warmest on record worldwide since 1850, when record-keeping began. Glaciers, snowpack and sea ice are shrinking, oceans are rising, droughts are longer and more intense in some areas, and weather extremes, such as heavy downpours that cause flooding, intense hurricanes and wildfire, are more frequent. Climate disruption is already happening.

While some of the most obvious impacts of climate change won't affect Colorado, the state will experience indirect effects from the displacement of millions of people living in coastal areas, thawing of arctic ecosystems and accelerated loss of usable lands to desert. However, the direct risks to the state are very serious. [emphasis added]

In a document explaining the revision to its U.S. temperature data, NASA stated that "there is no effect on the rankings of global temperature." According to a January 16 GISS statement, "The eight warmest years in the [global] GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990." On December 13, 2007, ScienceDaily published an analysis of data provided by the World Meteorological Organization to "show the top 11 warmest years all occurring in the last 13 years":

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) -- The decade of 1998-2007 is the warmest on record, according to data sources obtained by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global mean surface temperature for 2007 is currently estimated at 0.41°C/0.74°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.20°F.

The University of East Anglia and the Met Office's Hadley Centre have released preliminary global temperature figures for 2007, which show the top 11 warmest years all occurring in the last 13 years. The provisional global figure for 2007 using data from January to November, currently places the year as the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850.

Other remarkable global climatic events recorded so far in 2007 include record-low Arctic sea ice extent, which led to first recorded opening of the Canadian Northwest Passage; the relatively small Antarctic Ozone Hole; development of La Niña in the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific; and devastating floods, drought and storms in many places around the world.

The preliminary information for 2007 is based on climate data up to the end of November from networks of land-based weather stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites. The data are continually collected and disseminated by the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) of WMO's 188 Members and several collaborating research institutions. Final updates and figures for 2007 will be published in March 2008 in the annual WMO brochure for the Statement on the Status of the Global Climate.

WMO's global temperature analyses are based on two different sources. One is the combined dataset maintained by both the Hadley Centre of the UK Meteorological Office, and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, UK, which at this stage ranked 2007 as the seventh warmest on record. The other dataset is maintained by the US Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which indicated that 2007 is likely to be the fifth warmest on record.

Continuing the conversation with Boyles, Lundberg promoted the theories of Gray and an unnamed CEI representative:

BOYLES: But what I find interesting in this is the governor's expert that he turns to -- the head. Who is this person, and who does this person really work for?

LUNDBERG: Yeah, there's some interesting trails there, which I'm not the expert on. But I've heard, you know, you kind of draw this little web of all the various states that are goin' down these roads and find out that there's some nonprofit groups that seem to be sending the same experts to everybody.

BOYLES: The Center for Climate Strategies is one.

LUNDBERG: Mmm-hmm.

BOYLES: And they end up working directly to the governor. And they -- I don't know what their job is, who they really work for. But if that's the only person you're listening to --

LUNDBERG: Well, yeah, and, you know, again, let's have the scientific debate. I conducted, through a group we call the Republican Study Committee down at the capitol, a hearing last year on global warming, and we brought in the other side. We brought in Bill Gray --

BOYLES: Oh, yeah, sure.

LUNDBERG: -- Dr. Gray from CSU, and somebody from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in D.C., and Dr. Gray's presentation, I think, is pretty forceful -- so much so that I've got his -- I've got the video clips on my website. So if anybody wants to go and see what he had to say, it's there to, you know, on the Web.

BOYLES: Yeah. I'll tell you what, I appreciate the work and I appreciate what you've said, representative.

As Media Matters has documented (here, here, and here), CEI reportedly has received significant funding from energy industry sources, including more than $2 million from Exxon Mobil Corp. since 1998. According to the blog Think Progress, Exxon Mobil no longer provides funding to CEI. A May 28, 2006, article in The Washington Post noted that CEI's oil-funded benefactors extend well beyond Exxon Mobil:

CEI relies on donations from individuals, foundations and corporations. The most generous sponsors of last year's annual dinner at the Capital Hilton were the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Exxon Mobil, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and Pfizer. Other contributors included General Motors, the American Petroleum Institute, the American Plastics Council, the Chlorine Chemistry Council and Arch Coal.

Moroever, Media Matters has documented that CEI has engaged in overt acts of distortion in attempting to debunk climate change science. For example, one advertisement CEI sponsored in 2006 suggested that environmentalists have falsely labeled carbon dioxide a pollutant, arguing that it is in fact, "essential to life." But the ad distorts the argument made by scientists that while carbon dioxide is not inherently harmful, excessive discharges of the gas destabilize global temperatures via the greenhouse effect.

University of Missouri professor Curt Davis, upon whose research another of CEI's ads relied, condemned the campaign's content and motive, stating in a May 19, 2006, press release: "These television ads are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate." Davis added, "They are selectively using only parts of my previous research to support their claims. They are not telling the entire story to the public."

—E.B. & J.F.B.