Dear Rachel Frazin ( @RachelFrazin )

UPDATE (August 11, 2022, at 10:47am): Rachel Frazin has locked her Twitter account.

---

I usually do not respond to fact-checkers. They are the most agenda-driven, progressive partisans in the press. They do not seek facts but advance progressive talking points. Fact-checkers came about as a last-ditch effort for the American press corps to try to maintain some level of credibility with an increasingly incredulous public that itself could fact-check the press.

But this one, I think I need to respond to.

On July 27, 2023, Rachel Frazin, writing in The Hill, wrote this piece.

Scientists say that climate change bears significant responsibility for the sweltering heat. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, every additional 0.9 degrees of global warming causes “clearly discernible increases in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes including heatwaves.”

Meanwhile, research published this week found the heat waves impacting the U.S. and southern Europe would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change, while China’s heat wave would have been a 1-in-250-year event. 

Additionally,

But, while climate change is a contributing factor, it is not the only reason heat waves occur. 

Andy Hoell, a research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said other factors include natural variations in the weather and El Niño — a phenomenon in which winds that blow west along the equator weaken, pushing warm water east toward the West Coast of the U.S. 

El Niño, which typically occurs every two to seven years, can cause the northern U.S. and Canada to be dryer and warmer than usual while the Southeast becomes wetter. 

You will note she never mentioned a particular volcano I have been telling you about.

Now, I have received the following email from Rachel Frazin, fact-checking me about the volcano.

Hi there,

Rachel with The Hill here. I hope you're doing well!

I sent a message earlier to the contact email listed on your website, but wanted to write to this one as well since I'm not sure which one is the best way to out. 

My editor recently took an interest in your tweets like this one regarding the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano and climate change and asked me to look into whether that phenomena was causing the recent heatwaves.

I spoke to scientists, including the lead author of the Nature paper that was referenced, and they all said that climate change is the primary driver of the recent heat waves, while the volcano may be contributing a small amount of additional warming. 

Would you like to respond?

My deadline is tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern.

Best,

Rachel Frazin

Energy and Environment Reporter, The Hill

First, I would like to, for the record, criticize the ethics of The Hill for allowing a reporter who has staked out a position and an editorial view in an article to also serve separately as a fact-checker of those with whom she disagrees. But given The Hill’s history, I’m not surprised. Until January, I maintained a multi-year policy on my radio program of not citing The Hill. In fact, it is one of the very few publications I refuse to cite because of its long-standing behavior on social media of salacious tweets that seemingly mischaracterized underlying stories as a way to drive traffic to its website. I decided in January to add them back to show prep after their social media behaviors appeared less intentionally troll-like.

Now, as I’ve noted on radio, social media, and in my column, the *proximate cause* of *the current heatwave* is the 150 million metric tons of additional water vapor in the atmosphere. Just today, in newspapers across America, readers will read this from me:

If the press respected us more, they would instead run stories that this heat wave is a preview induced by a volcano.  Scientists have warned what would happen if the world warmed 1.5 to 2ºC.  This volcano is showing us.  If we do not make changes now, this is what things will look like long term.  Instead, at a time of increased rates of depression, despair, and suicide, the press corps has decided to scare the bejeezus out of people that we’ve reached a tipping point and the world is on the brink.

You’ll note, please, that Rachel Frazin wrote a piece ignoring the impact of the volcano on the present climate and uses my tweet, which states, “The American press corps is willfully misrepresenting the present heatwave as part of their ongoing narrative related to climate change,” as her pretext to “fact-check” me. But it is not my fault she ignored the volcano in her own fear-mongering in order to make a blatantly progressive partisan close to her piece. It reads:

Republicans have largely ignored, or in some cases denied, the link between the heat waves and climate change. Those on the 2024 campaign trail have had little to say about the climate crisis and have embraced policies that promote more fossil fuel use. 

On the other hand, Democrats have sought to address climate change, including through last year’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — the most significant climate legislation in the country’s history, which among other measures provided subsidies for climate-friendly energy sources. 

Then she ended her piece by positively citing Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Do any of you really think a “fact checker” who’d write such a blatantly partisan piece that is editorially tilted towards climate alarmism is really interested in the actual facts she chose to ignore in her piece?

Ironically, in the immediate aftermath of the volcanic eruption, climate scientists expected no impact at all on climate because of the small amount of sulfur dioxide released. See, e.g., point six in this piece at the Weather Channel. Only later did scientists realize the alarming amount of water vapor ejected into the atmosphere without a corresponding amount of sulfur dioxide, which has a cooling effect.

More specifically, published research has shown we have only begun to see the effects of that volcanic eruption on the global climate system. As a climate scientist friend explained to me, this is partly due to the intricacies of the Brewer Doboson Circulation, the QBO, and the respective polar vortexes of each hemisphere. The Northern Hemisphere only saw the spread of excess stratospheric water vapor after a late winter Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event. This coincided with the rapid evolution of La Nina to El Niño. The exceptional North Atlantic Ocean temperature anomalies may be a regional dynamical reflection of the volcano's effects on top of rapid warming in the tropical Pacific with El Niño.

Regardless of the cause and effect, it's completely legitimate to ask questions about the volcano's continued influence on the global climate, just as AP did here.

A couple of studies use computer models to show a warming effect from all that water vapor. One study, which has not yet undergone the scientific gold standard of peer review, reported this week that the warming could range from as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of added warming in some places to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of cooling elsewhere.

And it is completely legitimate to note that through March of this year, numerous scientific and mainstream publications were predicting an increase of 1.5ºC due to the excess water vapor in the atmosphere, and in fact, the original reports seem to have underestimated the amount of excess water vapor the volcano produced.

While the overall global impact might wash out or be small, as shown by some climate model simulations, the regional dynamical changes are likely much larger and nonlinear, e.g. the building Antarctic ozone hole and Arctic warmth for 3-7 years. It stands to reason that worldwide heat domes would be impacted as well.

I reject the media's facile premise that climate change fuels/drives/causes extreme events and instead investigate for myself the underlying atmosphere/ocean influences. Pew Research recently reported extremely low trust in the media's coverage of climate change as catastrophizing and exaggerating for advocacy purposes.

Climate scientists circling the wagons to claim 150 million metric tons of additional water vapor in the stratosphere is not the proximate cause of the sudden temperature increase are no better than the scientists who circled the wagons around the Wuhan Institute of Virology and insisted a wet market animal to human transfer of COVID was a far more likely source of COVID than the actual research facility actually researching COVID.

Lastly, please see the following:

1. NASA, August 2, 2022: “Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere: The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface.”

2. NPR, August 3, 2022: “Tonga's volcano sent tons of water into the stratosphere. That could warm the Earth: The violent eruption of Tonga's Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano injected an unprecedented amount of water directly into the stratosphere — and the vapor will stay there for years, likely affecting the Earth's climate patterns, NASA scientists say.”

3. New York Times, September 22, 2022: “The Tonga Volcano Shook the World. It May Also Affect the Climate: Scientists say water vapor injected into the stratosphere by the volcanic eruption in January may have a slight, though temporary, warming effect.”

4. LiveScience, September 24, 2022: “50 million tons of water vapor from Tonga's eruption could warm Earth for years: The explosive event increased atmospheric water vapor by 5%.”

5. Space.com, November 3, 2022: “Record-breaking Hunga Tonga volcanic plume might have warmed Earth's climate: The cloud rose so high that scientists had to explore unusual methods to infer its peak altitude.”

6. Nature, December 19, 2022: “Hunga Tonga eruption: the most remarkable climatic event in the last three decades: Major volcanic eruptions are well known drivers of sudden climate change. The effect of the recent major eruption of Hunga Tonga submarine volcano on 15 January 2022 may be very different from that of previous eruptions.”

7. NewScientist, January 12, 2023: “2022 Tonga eruption means we may hit 1.5°C of global warming earlier: The massive eruption of a Tongan volcano in January 2022 has made it more likely that we will exceed 1.5°C of global warming within the next five years, but the effect will disappear by 2035”

8. Carbon Brief, January 15, 2023: “Tonga volcano eruption raises ‘imminent’ risk of temporary 1.5C breach: The eruption of Tonga’s underwater volcano in 2022 may cause global temperatures to rise, raising the risk that at least one year in the next five will temporarily exceed the 1.5C warming threshold, new research finds.”

9. Phys.org, January 25, 2023: “Models show Tonga eruption increases chances of global temperature rising temporarily above 1.5º C: In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group suggests that the impact will be large enough to push average global temperatures temporarily above the 1.5°C increase limit targeted in the Paris Agreement back in 2015.”

10. Forbes, January 30, 2023: “Year-Old Tonga Eruption To Keep Global Weather Wild For Years: The problem is that the blast emitted 50 million metric tons of water vapor into the atmosphere, an increase of about 5%. In turn, that’s likely to mess with the climate.”

11. EOS, March 16, 2023: “Tonga Eruption May Temporarily Push Earth Closer to 1.5°C of Warming:The underwater eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai sent megatons of water vapor into the stratosphere, contributing to an increase in global warming over the next 5 years.”

12. SyFy, August 9, 2023: “The 2022 Tonga Volcanic Eruption May Cause Temporary Global Warming: The eruption caused temporary warming over the Pacific and could increase global warming over the next decade.”

I hope Rachel will see fit to link to this response and not just excerpt it so her readers can see all the links to all the stories in all the mainstream media and scientific publications that noted, for example, “The underwater eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai sent megatons of water vapor into the stratosphere, contributing to an increase in global warming over the next 5 years.”

Of course, that all raises the question of why she feels the need to fact-check me. Maybe it is because “[t]he American press corps is willfully misrepresenting the present heatwave as part of their ongoing narrative related to climate change.”

Now, be sure to tweet this out, as I don’t intend to reply to her email

.