I’m pretty sure it was the middle of winter.  At any rate, I remember that I was in my closed-up work van answering Anchor Rising-related emails on my lunch break from renovating a house on the Rhode Island waterfront.

I also remember, back during the election of 2010, that it was difficult not to conclude that the Providence Journal — especially its PolitiFact wing — had a special interest in the Cicilline-Loughlin race, in which it clearly favored the former.  In fact, in the particular email that I was writing, I stated my complete sympathy for Mr. Loughlin’s apparent decision to stop responding to PolitiFact inquiries about his statements.  From his point of view, it must have begun to feel like a fruitless waste of time.

In particular, the PolitiFact article in question was this one, in which the judges declared “false” the statement that “94 percent of the carbon emissions… are caused by nature.”  Because Loughlin didn’t respond, the PolitiFact crew spent some 1,400 words talking to a couple of scientists, one of whom responded:

“I never had any global cooling paper or talk or comment,” [Dr. James Hansen at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, with whom Loughlin once worked] wrote back to us. “The change of carbon dioxide, the increase year to year is entirely human-made. There is an up-and-down flux caused by vegetation growing (sucking carbon dioxide from the air) and decaying in the winter (releasing carbon dioxide), which is large — this fluctuation is natural and does not alter the annual mean increase due to humans. He is speaking nonsense.”

I’d initiated contact because, although the specific mention of “carbon emissions” may have been a misstatement made in the heat of live debate, the 94% number had appeared on Anchor Rising the December before election season, in a post by Monique:

One fact that has never been disputed, though it has mostly escaped the debate for some inexplicable reason, is the degree to which man is (not) responsible for the hypothesized cause of global warming. All of man’s vast activity on the planet amounts to only 6% of the total greenhouse gases generated (original link here), with Mother Nature generating the other 94% of greenhouse gases.

Inasmuch as the journalists at PolitiFact had declared a statement to be “false,” I thought they might be interested in the apparent source of a disputed claim.  The exchange is relevant, today, because I remember that the reporter specifically raised questions about the source’s credibility based on his emphasis on water vapor as a greenhouse gas (although that didn’t play into the 94% number), and today, I see such points have made it into Projo commentary pages:

All major climate models have overestimated the effects of man-made warming. Analysis by Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy shows that 44 of the world’s leading climate models projected an average temperature rise of about 0.5 degrees C during the last 16 years when measured temperatures were flat. The analysis was recently updated to include  73 of the leading climate models. Not a single model made an accurate forecast. …

So how do the climate models reach their alarming conclusions? They assume that positive feedback from water vapor will cause additional warming. The argument is that, since warmer air can hold more moisture, water vapor will increase in the atmosphere as Earth warms. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, additional water vapor will add additional warming to that caused by CO2.

Of course, as the author of those paragraphs, Steve Goreham, points out, the Earth’s water cycle is largely beyond human control, which means there’s no political advantage to be gained over our fellow human beings by talking about it.  Nobody’s going to give up his rights and suffer a softened economy over global climate changes if such sacrifices can’t possibly make a difference, or perhaps if it’s even admitted that there’s a debate to be had.

Postscript

By the way, in a completely unrelated development:

Congressman David N. Cicilline is losing his press secretary and social media specialist: former Providence Journal photographer Connie Grosch.

Grosch’s last day was Wednesday. She said the press secretary post had been a major career shift that began with “good intentions and expectations,” but “was too far from my roots.” …

Cicilline said he continues to be “a big fan of Connie’s and completely understand her interest to return to photography. We’re all going to miss working with her, especially me!”

So, it was an amiable parting, and well might it be: Cicilline’s message has been sent and surely received.  The career paths of local journalists can still lead through the offices of Democrat politicians, an assurance that is surely a comfort at a time when the venerable Boston Globe is proving to be an investment that pays mere pennies on the dollar (or worse, if one considers pension liabilities).