Speeches

Global "War"ming

Here we present two different speeches with opposing viewpoints to check the facts and dissect the reliability of the sources with a SMELL test.

PRESIDENT OBAMA (1/1/2015)

Fact Checking

Overview:

On January 1, 2015, in a portion of his State of the Union Address given to update congress on what is improving in the nation and what is being worked on, Obama states that climate change is a major threat to the world today.

Analysis:

• Statement: "2014 was the planet's warmest year on record"

This statement is true. Obama starts this portion of his address by giving this bold statement. Where did he get this information, and is it true? According to NASA's website, which is a very reliable source for these kinds of questions, because of their expertise and precise measurements, they have recorded that 2014 was the hottest year on record (NASA, 2015). There were analysis's done by NASA scientists, and a separate one by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists that both stated 2014 to be the warmest on record. Both of these analysis's from these leaders in global knowledge lead us to believe that it is true.

• Statement: "14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century"

This statement is true. In the same article that confirmed the last statement, NASA also concluded that "the 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000" (NASA, 2015). This would include at least 10 years. But what about the other 5? An article in The Guardian says "fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, according to the UN World Meteorological Organization, or WMO". The WMO is a "specialized agency of the United Nations. It is the UN system's authoritative voice on the state and behavior of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources" (WMO). These are also evidences of this statement being true.

• Statement: "The pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security"

This statement is foggy. A news story in The New York Times announced that "the Pentagon...released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorisms, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages" (Davenport, 2014). In an interview from Marcus D. King, an expert on climate change and international affairs at George Washington University, he states that "climate change and water shortages may have triggered the drought that caused farmers to relocate to Syrian cities and triggered situation where youth were more susceptible to joining extremist groups" (Davenport, 2014). It does seem that the pentagon believes climate change to be a national risk, and the root of many international conflicts, but it doesn't seem that any of those accusations can be directly proven. The pentagon may be preparing the military for wars and threats that the panic of climate change throughout the world can  bring. Even if they believe it and could be asking for funds to strengthen their defense to prepare for it, doesn't mean that global warming will be the root cause of any attacks or health shortages. Therefore, we chose this statement to be somewhat  true.

• Statement: "China committed for the first time to limiting their emissions."

This statement is true. The idea that another country is starting to cut back on emitting carbon dioxide into the environment gives the world the idea that it really is becoming a bigger issue than we may have thought. The "fact" that China is committing for the first time to limiting their emissions may change the minds of many about doing something about the issue, but is this fact true? Is China really putting in a big amount of effort to help the environment? An article, again in the New York Times, states that Xi Jinping of China, came to America, met with President Obama, and together they made plans to "[use] their leverage internationally to tackle climate change and to pressure other nations to do the same". Although their intentions may be good, the article also puts off the idea that, "it is not clear whether China will be able to enact and enforce a program that substantially limits emissions" (Davis, Davenport, 2015). So the fact that China did commit with the USA to limiting their emissions, whether it will happen or not is the real question. That makes this statement true, but the  future unknown.

The Smell Test

Source

President Obama is the main information source on this section of his address. He quotes a few statistics and general scientists, but it ultimately comes from his view and what he feels is important about the issue. Therefore some of his statements come as being an immediate source, and as a secondary source (McManus, 150). As the President of the United States, he already has a responsibility to be reliable. 

                Proximity

President Obama's proximity to the issue is very high. It is his role to track these issues and inform the public. He can get the connections to the most respected scientists on the subject and is really a main player in decisions made about the United States and the world as he meets with international leaders.

                Independence

President Obama's independence level is very low. He has opinions and government officials that he needs to work with which creates a conflict of interest. He does his best to promote what he feels the public needs. The words in this speech most likely aren't all his, and he acts as voice for what the government believes and focuses on.

                Expertise

President Obama expertise, or experience on the subject, is relatively high. He isn't an expert in climate control and it's causes and what it harms, but he has been in office for 7 years and is closely associated with experts in the climate change and global warming areas of science. He has been in meetings and discussions about this topic with world leaders and professionals who do the research, and really does know more about the worldly affect this may have, than most people do.

Motivation

The motive of this speech was to inform congress and ultimately the nation what is being focused on by the government right now. In this section of his address on global warming and climate change, he was warning and persuading the nation of global warming's danger and calling the nation to action on solving the issue. His form of persuasion was that of more principled persuasion than of unprincipled persuasion. Meaning that he laid out all of the facts and "let readers or viewers decide what [he] meant". There was no "deceptive manipulation" from what we saw (McManus, 160).

Evidence

We didn't feel as though there was a lot of direct evidence in this address. Obama is really good about giving statements and ideas that support his effort, but doesn't give any direct names or departments by those who give him the "evidence". It takes some time to research to claim the evidence instead of him just giving it out in the first place. After doing the fact checking though, and reading into other articles and experimental conclusions by scientists, we deemed the evidence to be there.

Logic

Obama does put in a lot of generalizations and opinions throughout his speech. Also throwing in a lot of overgeneralization by saying "all", "many", etc. Overall though, his statements are very logical. After researching the facts and finding out if his statements were actually true or not, his speech does tie together well with the original statements his sources had said.

Left Out

There are many things that are left out of these small section of Obama's speech. First off, he doesn't include a plan of how they are going to work on the "problem". Second, he doesn't mention many other viewpoints on the subject. There are lots of other opinions out there on global warming and climate change, and his comments stay limited to the other departments and leaders in government, and those he is closely associated with. He doesn't give out any direct names of people, which leaves us questioning who actually said the things he is claiming were said. 

Conclusion

Overall, the statements we chose to fact check in Obama's State of the Union Address about climate change seemed to us to be pretty true. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that as the President of the United States, he has resources to many experts in the field, and must have truth behind most of what he says because he does have the whole nation watching him. From the statements he gave, it seems that global warming, or climate change, is something the nation is concerned about and is preparing for in many different ways.

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IVAR GIAEVER (7/1/2015)

Fact Checking

Overview:

Ivar Giaever gives this speech at a Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on July 1, 2015.  His speech, compared to Obama's is a lot longer and his purpose in giving this speech it seems is to directly combat President Obama's statements. He tries to prove that global warming is a hoax and is nothing to worry about. He claims that global warming or climate change is a "non-problem".

Analysis:

• Statement: "The temperature of the Earth has not gone up in 90 years. 2014 was not the hottest year on record."

 This statement is mostly false. As we have already dissected from President Obama's direct opposite statement, we have come to realize that 2014 WAS actually the hottest year on record. So that part of the statement if false. But regarding the part that "the temperature of the Earth has not gone up in 90 years," that is a very broad statement. The temperature of the Earth varies in different parts of the world so we don't know exactly what he is referring to with that. He doesn't give any other description to what he means by that statement.

• Statement: "They now include the ocean, and for the past 100 years they didn't include the ocean" (in their heat measurements)

This statement is foggy. On the NASA website in an article entitled "Study Find's Earth's Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed",  Josh Willis is interviewed. He is a co-author to a project in analyzing satellite and direct ocean temperature data. He states that "scientists have been taking the temperature of the top half of the ocean directly since 2005, using a network of 3,000 floating temperature probes.... the deep parts of the ocean are harder to measure" (Phillips, 2014). This causes us to believe that they have at least been taking the temperature of the ocean since 2005. Regarding Giaever's statement, we aren't sure which "last 100 years" he is referring to. This statement is also using general rounded numbers like '100' which leads us to question the truthfulness of this statement. 

• Statement: "There are only 8 thermometers in the south pole to measure the average temperature."

This statement is foggy. There wasn't really any information we could find to prove this to be true or not. There is not a listing that we saw that explained how many thermometers there are to measure the temperature. NASA did put out an article about the 'Landsat 8', a satellite instrument used to measure temperatures. The Landsat 8 specifically was launched to "finally [have] a sensor capable of really investigating the [Antarctic ridge] in more detail" (Garner, 2013). With the Thermal Infrared Sensor on the Landsat 8, they were able to "pinpoint the record-setting pockets" (Garner, 2013) on Antarctica that are the coldest temperature spots in the world. So we know that this is at least one thermometer that is used to measure. Coincidence that it also has the 
                                                                                                   number 8? Not sure.

• Statement: "The south pole has never been as cold as it is right now." 

This statement is true. We found confirmation of it's truth from multiple articles including The Guardian, and USA Today. Both of them gave reference to Ted Scambos who is an Ice Scientist with NASA who announced to a the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco on December 9, 2013, that data from East Antarctica  shows "Earth has a new record for coldest temperature ever recorded: -94.7C (-135.8F). The old record had been -89.2C (-128.6F). This is proof that "the south pole has never been as cold as it is right now" (The Guardian, 2013). Well, at least from 2013.

The Smell Test

Source

Ivar Giaever is a Nobel Prize winner from 1973, and now a retired professor from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's department of physics. According to Marc Morono from Climate Depot, "he resigned from the American Physical Society after disagreeing with their stance on global warming (which they believe is occurring and is 'incontrovertible')," (Morono, 2011). In a presentation Giaver gave to the 62nd Meeting of Nobel Laureates in 2012 he said, "I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists, I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so - half a day maybe, on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned. And I'm going to try to explain to you why that was the case" (Giaever, 2014). Most of Giaever's statements were an immediate source and a lot of his own interpretations of different data that he had found.

           Proximity

Giaever's proximity to the source is very low. He has not worked directly with global warming and climate change except for that of a general interest. He has not been directly involved with the topic on a high level, except for when he was positioned on the American Physical Society (APS) of which he resigned on September 13, 2012 "in disgust over the group's promotion of man-made global warming fears." (Morano, 2011). 

           Independence

Giaever's level of independence on this issue is very high. He doesn't have any ties to other people or groups who could be skewing is opinions. He has done well at removing himself from any organizations of which believe things that he does not wish to stand for. He has made himself very individual and strong in that regard.

           Expertise

Giaever wasn't a global warming expert from the start. He mentioned in his presentations for the Nobel Laureates in 2012 that he just started researching on Google. He has been highly involved in giving speeches and doing research on the topic though, since 2008 and has come across a lot of graphs and facts that he states, supports his idea of a non-threatening climate change. He is an expert in the laws of physics, though, as he won the Nobel Prize for Physics. Giaever was "one of Barack Obama's leading scientific supporters during the 2008 president election campaign" according to an article by Philip Sherwell from The Telegraph.

Motivation

The motivation behind this speech was mostly to persuade listeners to believe that climate change or global warming is a hoax. He combats directly, President Obama's speech to congress by giving data and information he has found that doesn't match with what the President has sometimes overgeneralized. He wants to persuade the audience to disagree with the government. We can tell that because of the remarks he makes about the government like "sometimes the government does stupid things". Another motive is to entertain someone when he tells his stories and gives is joking remarks.

Evidence

Giaever puts a lot of numbers and graphs and "evidence" into his speech, but without citing where he received the information. Therefore, this makes us more uneasy about his statements because we aren't sure of how reliable the source is. We don't know how he knows what he knows except for the few references he makes to him "googling" on the internet. The facts that are easy to verify, like "The American Physical Society has already spoken: The evidence is incontrovertible. Global warming is occurring" (Hayward, 2015) are mostly facts that are supporting global warming. Then Giaever combats these statements with words like "in the last 100 years we have measured the temperature, it has gone up 0.8 degrees, and everything in the world has gotten better." These words are ones that are hard to find evidence for. 

Logic

His logic, we feel, is a somewhat strongpoint throughout the speech. He explains things in ways that could make sense, and gives graphs and statistics that ultimately be logical and support his claims, but what ruins the logic, is not having the strong evidence to support his claims.  He does makes overgeneralization when he says things like "everything in the world has gotten better" (referring to our general lifestyle despite "global warming"). 

Left Out

He focuses a lot on telling stories to try and tell his point - but they don't always seem to support his statements. The stories seem to replace the facts and reliable sources where he gets his information.  He puts out numbers and graphs but doesn't always state where he got them from. He seems to downplay and name-call those who do believe in climate change and global warming. This is a way to persuade the audience to change their opinions to agree with his bias because then they won't fit into the group he is downplaying.

Conclusion

Overall, Giaever's facts were hard to confirm, and for the most part were untrue, except for the ones that supported climate change. The SMELL test, which was meant to explain how reliable of a source he is, didn't give us the best information to deem him a strong source. In the video, he mostly emphasized his opinions and gave sly remarks to make the audience feel more bitter towards global warming supporters and the government in general.