Mark Levin interviews Dr Patrick J. Michaels on 'The Truth About Climate Change'. This Fox News presentation makes a truth claim in it's title: that the interview gives the 'true' facts about Climate Change. Let's examine the logic of that truth claim.

Dr Patrick J. Michaels^**3, a leading climate change scepticPeople who deny, dismiss, or doubt the scientific opinion on climate change., is introduced as an ‘expert on all things climate and environment’. The host justifies this opinion with a list of academic credentials. He fails to mention that Dr Michaels works full time for an institute^**4 wholly owned and funded by a multinational petroleum, and chemicals company^**5.

Michaels accepts that global average temperature has risen by 0.9 degrees since 1900 (this works out to be an 8.5% increase of average temperature since 1802)^**2. He says that that amount of temperature increase is ‘not a lot’ and that about half of this increase may be due to greenhouse gasses, (not for sure). He gives no citation for either his value statement, (‘not a lot’), nor his questioning of greenhouse gas culpability.

He claims that the modelling software used by the UN has predicted much larger increases in temperature than have actually come about. He demonstrates this by reference to a chart. He doesn't say where the chart came from, who prepared it, nor where the data it purports to show has come from.

His conclusion (from this observation based on his chart) is not stated but is clearly that the admitted 8.5% temperature rise since 1880 does not pose a problem for mankind or the environment.

When challenged on extreme weather events he denies that they are happening. He admits that there is more damage being caused by weather (nowadays) because ‘there is more ‘stuff’ and people in the way of weather’.

Here he cites a ‘hotshot’ tropical meteorologist (a quick flash of a face and name on screen—too quick to really take in) who says that there is no relationship whatsoever between the accumulated cyclone energy and the surface temperature of the earth.

The US EPA has produced an ‘endangerment’ finding about global warming and the role of CO₂ emissions. This is based on parameterised modelling projecting 1900-1945 data into the future. The models have predicted higher rises in temperature than have occurred so they are ‘wrong’ and findings based on them should be rejected.

He does not mention the possibility of a connection between CO₂ and temperature. But says temperatures were beginning to come down in the late 1900s, but have gone up now due to an extended El Nino.

Footnotes:

1. The global average atmospheric carbon in parts per million:

1800 283 ppm 1860 288 ppm 1900 291 ppm 1950 310 ppm 1980 332 ppm 1995 360 ppm 1999 370 ppm 2006 380 ppm 2015 400 ppm 2017 405 ppm

Chicago Tribune Sea level data by Dave Burton NOAA (US) space.com NASA

2. Percentage rise in average global surface temperature (agst) since 1880:
A figure of 8.5% since 1880 is arrived at by:
Take agst to be 14 degrees celsius in 1950.
We are told that this figure is reached by adding one third of the 0.8 degree rise to the 1880 agst. So we can calculate the 1880 figure as 13.733334 degrees celsius.
The agst in 2017 was 14.9 degrees celsius.
Subtract from this the 13.733334 figure for 1880. giving 1.16666666
Divide this figure by the 1880 figure and multiply by 100 to derive a percentage.

3. Patrick J. Michaels (born February 15, 1950) is an American climatologist. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute. Until 2007 he was research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, where he had worked from 1980...
Funding from energy or fossil fuel companies
On July 27, 2006 ABC News reported that a Colorado energy cooperative, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, had given Michaels $100,000. An Associated Press report said that the donations had been made after Michaels had ’told Western business leaders ... that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists' global warming research’ and noted that the cooperative had a vested interest in opposing mandatory carbon dioxide caps, a situation that raised conflict of interest concerns. Michaels acknowledged on CNN that 40 per cent of his funding came from the oil industry. ... A 2005 article published by the Seattle Times reported that Michaels had received more than $165,000 in fuel-industry funding, including money from the coal industry to publish his own climate journal.
Source: wikipedia

4. The Cato Institute:
... advocates a limited role for government in domestic and foreign affairs. This includes support for abolishing minimum wage laws; opposition to universal health care; the privatization of many government agencies including Social Security, NASA, and the United States Postal Service as well as public schooling; abolishing child labor laws; and a non-interventionist foreign policy.
It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries.
Source: wikipedia

5. Koch Industries, Inc.: is an American multinational corporation ... involved in the manufacturing, refining, and distribution of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizers, pulp and paper, chemical technology equipment ...
Source: wikipedia

6. History of electricity generation: link