Wow. Just Wow.

I have no explanation for this. None what so ever.

But it tells you everything you need to know about how skewed the thinking is with Scaife's braintrust when it comes to climate science.

Take a look at this from today's Sunday Pops:

In the Orwellian moment of the week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that efforts to promote transparency in "climate change" research, among other things, are inhibiting scientific inquiry. Transparency demands "make no constructive contribution to the public discourse," says the group. How utterly bizarre.

Now let's go see what they're actually talking about.

If you google the phrase they quote (""make no constructive contribution to the public discourse") you eventually make it to this board statement, dated June 28, 2011, from the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Begin to read it and you'll see it's NOT about transparency at all.

The quotation is taken from the last sentence of the statement's opening paragraph:

We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems. AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions. The progress of science and protection of its integrity depend on both full transparency about the details of scientific methodology and the freedom to follow the pursuit of knowledge. The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists. The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse. [Emphasis added.]

This is not about "transparency" (which the AAAS clearly states that it supports) but about excessive FOIA requests for personal data that'll then be used for harrassment and intimidation. Then there's the death threats.

Only those infected with teh climate crazie could possibly equate the two.

Here's what else the AAAS has to say about science. Stuff the braintrust curiously omits:

Scientists and policymakers may disagree over the scientific conclusions on climate change and other policy-relevant topics. But the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results. Science advances through a self-correcting system in which research results are shared and critically evaluated by peers and experiments are repeated when necessary. Disagreements about the interpretation of data, the methodology, and findings are part of daily scientific discourse. Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial. Most scientific disagreements are unrelated to any kind of fraud and are considered a legitimate and normal part of the scientific process. The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise.

And yet Scaife's braintrust whittles all that down to the AAAS declaring efforts to promote transparency are inhibiting scientific inquiry.

Tells you everything you need to know about the mendacity that doubles for editorial policy with Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust. How truly bizarre.

The editorial page an embarrassment to us, the news-reading public. As it also must be an embarrassment to all the fine reporters who find themselves working for Richard Mellon Scaife. They must realize that all their good work is being undermined, tainted or otherwise sullied by teh climate crazie dripping off of Scaife's editorial page.

I feel sorry for them. I really do.

Governor Tim Pawlenty - Science Denier

From The Hill:

Climate change exists, but is due mostly to natural — not man-made — causes, GOP presidential contender Tim Pawlenty said Tuesday.

Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who's rejected his past support for cap and trade, said he believes the extent to which humans contribute to climate change is disputable.

"So there is climate change, but the reality is the science of it indicates that most of it, if not all of it, is caused by natural causes," he said on Fox News. "And as to the potential human contribution to that, there's a great scientific dispute about that very issue."

Actually, there isn't.

According to a survey done in 2008 by the University of Illinois at Chicago:

A group of 3,146 earth scientists surveyed around the world overwhelmingly agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.

And the results?

Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.

About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

But here's the real fun part. When they took a look at what sort of scientist answers which question, they found that:

In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 and 64 percent respectively believing in human involvement. Doran compared their responses to a recent poll showing only 58 percent of the public thinks human activity contributes to global warming.

Petroleum scientists are among the biggest doubters. Hmmm...petroleum. I wonder why they'd be doubters. But experts in the field are 33 to 1 in favor of the science.

And yet Pawlenty calls that a "great scientific dispute."

He's joined teh climate crazie deniers like Rick "There's no such thing as global warming" Santorum.

Good for him.

Anti-Science News (Climate Change Edition)

This week, our favorite Ex-Senator, Rick Santorum, came out and said it:

There is no such thing as global warming.

Watch it:


Rick must've missed the NOAA report that it was undeniable.

They got the charts, they got the graphs, they got the science.

Rick's got nothing.

Then there's this at the Trib:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled correctly that the Environmental Protection Agency -- not judges -- should lead "greenhouse gas" regulation under the Clean Air Act. But EPA's fallacious classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant was left unaddressed.

The 8-0 decision rejected a lawsuit that sought to use public-nuisance laws to force utilities to cut CO2 emissions.

And then:

Not at issue was EPA regulating CO2 as a pollutant -- an absurd label for a substance intrinsic to nature and living creatures that stretches the Clean Air Act too far.

The anti-CO2 efforts of the Obama administration's ideologically driven, anti-growth EPA are an end run around congressional rejection of "global warming" legislation premised on junk science.

A case involving that issue can't reach the Supreme Court soon enough.

See that last sentence? Scaife's braintrust has to know that that issue already has reached the Supreme Court. In 2007 and they found that CO2 can be regulated by the EPA.

From Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court held that:

Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Act’s capacious definition of “air pollutant,” EPA has statutory authority to regulate emission of such gases from new motor vehicles. That definition—which includes “any air pollution agent..., including any physical, chemical,...substance...emitted into...the ambient air...,”—embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe. Moreover, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are undoubtedly “physical [and] chemical...substance[s].”

Justice Stevens even began his decision with this:

A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a “greenhouse gas.”

Yet another example of Scaife's braintrust misleading his audience.

Then there's the scientist. Again from today's Trib:

A professor emeritus at Colorado State University who's a credentialed longtime member of the American Meteorological Society blasts the AMS for allowing a small band of administrators to "hijack" the group's mission in support of "climate change."

Bill Gray, on the website Climate Realists (climaterealists.com), writes of his "disappointment" with the AMS' "downward path" over the last decade in advocating anthropogenic global warming. This, he says, when many AMS members do not support that conclusion.

"We believe that humans are having little or no significant influence on the global climate and that the many Global Circulation Climate Model (GCM) results and the four (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports do not realistically give accurate future projections," Mr. Gray says.

The link leads ultimately to this piece at Icecap.us. Go read it. Then go back to NOAA's assertion that climate change is undeniable.

Then ask yourself the question "Does Gray's complaint about the AMS uproot all of that science?" If it does, then he's made his case. If it doesn't, then the science stands.

Simple and undeniable as that.

From Our Friends Down Under

A website from Australia called "The Conversation" is undertaking a two-week long series on the science of climate change - with an eye towards the "skeptics" who are looking to "cloud the debate."

From the introduction:

The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes.

Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now.

Not that this'll change Rick Santorum's mind, of course. But let's continue. The Conversation describes the issue:

A vast number of scientists, engineers, and visionary businesspeople are boldly designing a future that is based on low-impact energy pathways and living within safe planetary boundaries; a future in which substantial health gains can be achieved by eliminating fossil-fuel pollution; and a future in which we strive to hand over a liveable planet to posterity.

At the other extreme, understandable economic insecurity and fear of radical change have been exploited by ideologues and vested interests to whip up ill-informed, populist rage, and climate scientists have become the punching bag of shock jocks and tabloid scribes.

Aided by a pervasive media culture that often considers peer-reviewed scientific evidence to be in need of “balance” by internet bloggers, this has enabled so-called “sceptics” to find a captive audience while largely escaping scrutiny.

Australians have been exposed to a phony public debate which is not remotely reflected in the scientific literature and community of experts.

Beginning today, The Conversation will bring much-needed and long-overdue accountability to the climate “sceptics.”

Americans, too.

The first post is on the Greenhouse Effect:

It would be easy to form the opinion that everything we know about climate change is based upon the observed rise in global temperatures and observed increase in carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution.

In other words, one could have the mistaken impression that the entirety of climate science is based upon a single correlation study.

In reality, the correlation between global mean temperature and carbon dioxide over the 20th century forms an important, but very small part of the evidence for a human role in climate change.

Our assessment of the future risk from the continued build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is even less informed by 20th century changes in global mean temperature.

For example, our understanding of the greenhouse effect – the link between greenhouse gas concentrations and global surface air temperature – is based primarily on our fundamental understanding of mathematics, physics, astronomy and chemistry.

Much of this science is textbook material that is at least a century old and does not rely on the recent climate record.

For good measure, they point out some evidence anyway. They point out that Venus is extremely hot, in large part due to greenhouse gases. They point out that temperature change is "uniquely" associated with greenhouse gases, such as:

• greater warming in polar regions than tropical regions
• greater warming over the continents than the oceans
• greater warming of night time temperatures than daytime temperatures
• greater warming in winter compared with summer
• a pattern of cooling in the high atmosphere (stratosphere) with simultaneous warming in the lower atmosphere (troposphere).

And so on.

Of course none of this is true because some stolen emails in England were talking about "fixing" the tree ring data.

Lil Ricky, Climate Change, And Teh Gays

I'm not sure if former(because he lost by 18 points)Senator Rick Santorum is trying to out crazie Representative Michelle Bachman and former(because she quit)Governor Sarah Palin, but he's certainly giving it the old college try.

First he's on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and calls climate change "absurd":

Former Congressman and current Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is turning up the heat on the issue of man-made global warming, calling it "patently absurd," a stance putting him at odds with perceived frontrunner Mitt Romney.

"I believe the Earth gets warmer and I also believe the Earth gets cooler, and I think history points out that it does that," Santorum said on Rush Limbaugh's radio show this afternoon.

"The idea that man – through the production of CO2 (carbon dioxide) which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas – is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, patently absurd."

Oops. I stand corrected. I should have said "patently absurd."

And yes, I got that from World Net Daily. Who better to track teh crazie than teh crazie itself?

But let's take a look at Rick's "evidence" shall we?

Today, Santorum of Pennsylvania was adamant in his stance against man-made climate change, saying there were numerous factors that help regulate the temperature on the planet, specifically citing El Nino, La Nina, sunspots, and moisture in the air.

He said the political left uses the issue to its benefit no matter what the temperature is: "It's really a beautifully concocted scheme because they know the Earth is going to cool and warm. And so, if it's been on a warming trend for a while, [they say] 'Let's take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it's getting warmer.'

"Just like they did in the '70s when it was getting cooler. They needed the government to come in and regulate your life because it's getting cooler. It's just an excuse for more government control of your life and I've never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science between the whole narrative."

Ok, let's establish the baseline here. The earth is warming. Here's a graph from NASA:


In one sense Rick is right. The Earth does cool. Sometimes. But then it warms up more. Just saying that the earth warms and cools is a knowing distortion. Of course the earth cools. It was cooler last night than it was during the day. It was cooler last December than it will be this July. There are always cycles but none of those change the fact that over time Rick, the earth is getting warmer and warmer.

I guess he hasn't read that NOAA has declared global warming undeniable. But given the fact that a few years ago he wanted to limit the public's access to NOAA in favor of his campaign contributors at Accuweather.

Via ThinkProgress we learn of Rick's future plans:

During an appearance on CNN this evening, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R-PA) hinted that he would push for a federal constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage if he were elected president, arguing that gay or lesbian relationships could destabilize the culture, rob children “of the potential of having a mom and a dad,” and undermine religious liberties

And he was quoted as saying:

nce people realize the consequence to society of changing this definition, it’s not that we’re against anybody. People can live the life they want to live. They can do whatever they want to do in the privacy of their home with respect to that activity. Now you’re talking about changing the laws of the country. and it could have a profound impact on society, on faith, on education. Once people realize that, they say, you know what, we respect people’s life to live the life they want to lead but don’t change how with that definition.

Really? People can do whatever they want in the privacy of their own homes? That's not what he said in 2008:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum said in the AP interview, which was published Monday.

Ok, I'll make the cheap shot.

Rick Santorum is patently absurd.

Yes, Let's Meet David Evans

From the editorial page at today's Tribune-Review:

It's most unsettling to the cluckers of climate change when one of their own leading adherents, who formerly toed the line, becomes skeptical and drop-kicks the "science."

Meet David Evans.

A scientist with six university degrees, Mr. Evans consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (today's Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005. He studied carbon in plants, debris, forestry and agricultural products.

The remarks Scaife's braintrust uses come from this column at the Financial Times.

The thing you should've noticed in the op-ed is how the braintrust describes Evans - "a scientist with six university degrees." But which six? You'd think one of them is in climate science.

But you'd be wrong.

Here's the description from the bottom of the FT column:

David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23.

Given that the Trib cut and pasted whole phrases from this description, they had to know that he wasn't a climate scientist. But still, it's a PhD in electrical engineering - and that's nothing to sneeze at.

But you'd think that were he an expert in the field, he'd have some peer-reviewed publications under his belt, right?

Um, no. According to this "skeptic watch" page, Evens published one peer-reviewed paper. In 1987. And it wasn't about climate change. Interesting.

Also the material in the presentation Evans made at that Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, that became the FT column that the braintrust used to "debunk" climate science was itself debunked.

In 2007.

Nice going, guys. You made this one easy.

The Stupidest Thing I Ever Read In The Trib

From today's Sunday Pops section of the op-ed page:

And, of course, this was inevitable: a sideshow of unfounded speculation that killer tornadoes are the result of supposed climate change. NBC weatherman Al Roker was one of the first cluckers out of the box to mention climate change, according to The Daily Caller. Perhaps Mr. Roker and other climate crusaders could lend some of their credibility to doomsdayologist Harold Camping. After all, he, too, dabbles in very much the same "science."

If this is the Daily Caller article to which Scaife's braintrust is referring, they didn't even get it right. No where in there does it say that Roker was one of the first to mention climate change. But this is what The Daily Caller says Roker says:

On Monday’s “Martin Bashir Show” program on MSNBC, “Today” weatherman Al Roker had a theory on what’s behind the weather. Broadcasting live from the site of St. John’s Hospital in Joplin that took a hard hit from Sunday’s weather, Roker assessed the tornado that hit Joplin to be on the top-end of the Fujita Scale.

“Well you know the National Weather Service is probably on the ground now and they will assess the damage,” Roker said. “Some people are saying an EF3. I would put this probably between an EF4 and EF5, which is the top of the Fujita Scale.”

Roker also offered a theory on why tornadoes are seemingly touching down in more urban areas as of late. His answer: Climate change.

Unfortunately for Scaife's braintrust, the speculation isn't unfounded. Take a look at this from 2007:

Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but few global models have attempted to simulate the strength of updrafts in these storms. The model developed at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the observed difference in strength between land and ocean storms and is the first to estimate how the strength will change in a warming climate, including "severe thunderstorms" that also occur with significant wind shear and produce damaging winds at the ground.

This information can be derived from the temperatures and humidities predicted by a climate computer model, according to the new study published on August 17 in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. It predicts that in a warmer climate, stronger and more severe storms can be expected, but with fewer storms overall.

On the other hand, it'll take decades of data to conclude whether the current season of bad weather is an anomaly or a trend. But as Bryan Walsh at Time.com writes:

But guess what? It doesn't matter. We already know more than enough about climate change to fear it. We know enough to embark on the long-term changes to our energy economy needed to reduce carbon emissions and blunt the impact of what no less than the Department of Defense has called a major threat to national security.

Did you know that? Did you know that the Department of Defense has called climate change a threat to national security? I do.

The braintrust obviously doesn't. For the scientifically ignorant braintrust, it's on as solid ground as Harold Camping's conclusion that the world was going to end on May 21.

We can, perhaps, forgive the good Reverend for allowing his faith to shred his rational thinking. When I think of Reverend Camping I wonder whether Abul'-Ala' al-Ma'arri was on to something. We are, after all, a nation where a quarter of us don't believe in the science of evolution, so how small a jump is it for a fringe to count the begats to "establish" the beginning of the world and that to "establish" the date of The Flood and then from that to "establish" the end of the world?

Not much. Obviously.

But for a "news" source (even one as tenuously connected to the news as Scaife's op-ed braintrust) to equate such real science as climate change with such drivel as Camping's end-that-wasn't is just beyond stupid.

Even for them.

Familiar Territory...

The Tribune-Review's on familiar territory today with yet another sortie on the science of climate change. Take a look:

Researchers who reviewed global-warming "forecasting" have found that procedures followed by the United Nations' chief climate cluckers violated 81 percent of 89 relevant forecasting principles.

Along with other experts who have peeked behind the curtain of climate change, these researchers have come to a common conclusion: The alarm over man-made global warming is an anti-scientific political movement.

In a presentation to Congress, J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania -- whose own work in forecasting methods is internationally known -- said the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has failed to demonstrate the "predictive validity" of its procedures.

A few caveats before we begin. J. Scott Armstrong is not a climate scientist. He's a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business but was not speaking as a representative of the that school.

More specifically, it was a presentation to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology:

On Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will hold a hearing to examine processes used to generate key climate change science and information used to inform policy development and decision-making.

The rhetorical exercise of the hearing starts with this:

Since the dawn of science, man has tried to describe and measure the natural world. Through an iterative process of data collection, formulation of hypotheses, and testing and refining these hypotheses, a knowledge base of information is built that yield theories and allow for predictive models to be built that describe them. Experiments are conducted to test these hypotheses, theories and models. As new observations are incorporated throughout the process, the theories must be able to assimilate these new data or change to accommodate new facts. Confidence in a theory grows only if it is able to survive a rigorous testing process, it is supported by multiple and independent lines of evidence, and competing explanations can be ruled out. The American Physical Society statement on ethics and values states that: “The success and credibility of science are anchored in the willingness of scientists to:

1. Expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others. This requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials.
2. Abandon or modify previously accepted conclusions when confronted with more complete or reliable experimental or observational evidence.

Adherence to these principles provides a mechanism for self-correction that is the foundation of the credibility of science.

By undermining the confidence in the process, this anti-science science committee is looking to undermine the science of climate change itself.

This is where Scott Armstrong comes in. From the abstract from his testimony:

The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives such as doing nothing.

Without scientific forecasts for all three aspects of the alarm, there is no scientific basis to enact regulations. In effect, it is a three-legged stool. Despite repeated appeals to global warming alarmists, we have been unable to find scientific forecasts for any of the three legs.

I am not sure that that last support (the one about cost-effective regulations) is necessary for the science to be right, but I'm no professor of marketing at a business school so I'm obviously no expert in the science of climate change.

In any event, it's interesting that the committee would use the scientific criteria laid out by the American Physical Society as part of a plan to undermine climate change while ignoring that society's own statement on the matter:

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

You'd think that if Armstrong's critiques (which have been around for years) were so inescapably correct the APS statement from 2007 would be amended by now. In fact there was a commentary on the statement released a year ago (April, 2010). It begins like this:

There is a substantial body of peer reviewed scientific research to support the technical aspects of the 2007 APS statement.

So I am guessing the APS doesn't agree with Armstrong. I am guessing that they think they're right and, if asked, they'd think Armstrong was wrong.

On the one hand you have a whole buncha scientists who, as a society, have released a statement saying that climate change is "incontrovertible." On the other there's a marketing professor says otherwise.

Who would you trust for the correct answer? I'd trust the scientists to know the science.

And we all know that Scaife's braintrust don't.

The Trib's Editorial Board FINALLY Quotes NOAA

But now in the way that you think.

First here's what Scaife's Braintrust posted today:

A Valentine's Day solar flare -- the largest since Dec. 5, 2006, and part of an expected upswing in the 11-year cycle of solar activity -- is cause for legitimate concern. But don't shoot Bruce Willis into space or bet the farm on solar-flare shields just yet.

Solar flares' charged particles crash into Earth's atmosphere 20 to 30 hours later. Resulting electromagnetic disruption affects radio, satellites, power grids and high-tech marvels such as GPS -- on which humanity depends far more today than during the last solar upswing about a decade ago.

Some scientists now warn of a potential $2 trillion "solar 'Katrina.'" The head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the Financial Times: "Predict and prepare should be the watchwords."

The strongest flare ever recorded wiped out much of Earth's then-new telegraph network in 1859, yet occurred during a "weak" cycle. So the threat can't be dismissed, despite NASA dubbing the Feb. 14 flare "rather weak." Whatever steps can be taken to minimize that threat should be taken.

Still, whatever countermeasures mankind can employ surely are puny compared to the forces that solar flares unleash. Yes, the sun does bear watching. But we must be prepared to understand that the limits of our defenses can be sobering.

Now, let's unweave. The quotation in the third paragraph leads to this article in the Financial Times. And this quotation:

“Predict and prepare should be the watchwords,” agreed Jane Lubchenco, head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And now we have a name. So who's Jane Lubchenco? From her NOAA webpage:

Dr. Lubchenco has studied marine ecosystems around the world and championed the importance of science and its relevance to policy making and human well-being. A former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America, she served 10 years on the National Science Board (Board of Directors for the National Science Foundation). From 1999-2009 she led PISCO, a large 4-university, interdisciplinary team of scientists investigating the large marine ecosystem along the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. She has a special interest in Arctic ecosystems, with recent work in Svalbard, Greenland and the Alaskan arctic.

Dr. Lubchenco has provided scientific input to multiple U.S. Administrations and Congress on climate, fisheries, marine ecosystems, and biodiversity. Dr. Lubchenco served on the first National Academy of Sciences study on ‘Policy Implications of Global Warming’, providing advice to the George H.W. Bush administration and Congress. In 1997 she briefed President Clinton and Vice President Gore and Members of Congress on climate change.

Her scientific contributions are widely recognized. Eight of her publications are “Science Citation Classics”; she is one of the ‘most highly cited’ ecologists in the world. Dr. Lubchenco is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and four international academies of science: the Royal Society, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, Europe, and Chile. She has received numerous awards including a MacArthur (‘genius’) Fellowship, twelve honorary degrees, the 2002 Heinz Award in the Environment, the 2005 AAAS Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology and the 2008 Zayed International Prize for the Environment.

So I guess she's an expert. Genius Award, too. Frickin impressive.

Now that Lubchenco is deemed worthy to quote but, oddly not worthy enough to be named on the Trib's editorial page (I won't go so far as to wonder whether it's because she's a she), will we be seeing any reference to any other quotation from her?

Like these?

Being a proud UConn grad it pains me to reference anything with the name Yale in it, but considering where I am going with this, this is a good place to start:

Yale Environment 360: My first question is about the climate impacts report that you all came out with very recently. What is the message that you were hoping people would take from that?

Jane Lubchenco: I think the take-away message is that the evidence is in: Climate change is real, it’s causing changes in our own backyard, many of those changes are increasingly challenging to society, and therefore there is urgency in moving ahead with reducing heat-trapping pollution as soon as possible.

Or this quotation:

Jane Lubchenco: Climate change is happening now. It’s not a theory. It’s a set of observed facts. It’s affecting many of the things that people care about

Marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco is head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Dr. Lubchenco told EarthSky that global climate change from fossil fuel burning is impacting Earth’s oceans today.

Jane Lubchenco: Climate change is already affecting oceans. It’s making them warmer. It’s making sea levels rise. And it’s making them more acidic. All of those change both the beauty and the bounty of oceans.

Or this one:

“For the first time, and in a single compelling comparison, the analysis brings together multiple observational records from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming,”

And the report she mentions? It's this one.

Where NOAA says Climate change is UNDENIABLE.

Will the Trib ever get to that?

State Of The Climate (2010)

Since you won't see this in The Trib, here's some of NOAA's Global Highlights from 2010:

The year 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year since records began in 1880. The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average. The range associated with this value is plus or minus 0.07°C (0.13°F). The 2010 combined land and ocean surface temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was also the warmest on record, while the combined land and ocean surface temperature in the Southern Hemisphere was the sixth warmest such period on record. The annual globally averaged land temperature was 0.96°C (1.73°F) above average, which tied with 2005 as the second warmest year record. The range associated with this value is plus or minus 0.11°C (0.20°F). The warmest year was 2007, at 0.99°C (1.78°F) above the 20th century average. The decadal global land and ocean average temperature anomaly for 2001–2010 was the warmest decade on record for the globe, with a surface global temperature of 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average. This surpassed the previous decadal record (1991–2000) value of 0.36°C (0.65°F).

Huh. Warmest decade on record. Imagine that. Wait - you don't have to. It really happened.

They Try...

And still don't get it.

From today's Tribune-Review Op-ed page:

A decade ago, writing in The Independent newspaper, opiner Charles Onians lamented that global warming meant "snow is starting to disappear from our lives." Winter has just arrived but the Brits are suffering through one of the snowiest winters on record. You know what's coming next: "Honey, throw another log on the fire -- it's getting cold outside."

The point being, of course, that since there's a lot of snow outside now in Britain, Onians must've been wrong when he said that it's disappearing. Silly ninny! Doesn't he know that global warming's a hoax?

Um, except...

According to NOAA:

Northern Hemisphere average annual snow cover has declined in recent decades. This pattern is consistent with warmer global temperatures. Some of the largest declines have been observed in the spring and summer months.

There's even a graph:

See the general downward trend?

That means that the northern hemisphere (and that's where England is, by the way) has seen less snow over the past few decades. More or less what Onians was getting at, what what?

Silly ninnies.

Stuff We Already Knew (Part II)

Remember this?

Mediamatters published an internal Fox "News" email detailing how a Fox "News" Vice President told his producers how to skew the reporting on Health Care Reform.

Well, there's another email. This time it's about climate change:

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest [decade] on record."

The data is solid, by the way. Do I need to list all the science academies who say so?

Again, this is from the "news" channel with the tagline "We report. You decide."

Another reason why that's complete bull.

Meanwhile in our own hometown, The Tribune-Review editorial page again confuses weather with climate (and makes a silly embarrassing mistake in the process - more on that in a minute):

Predictions of a "mild winter" have been followed by early snowstorms and piercing cold that have blasted the East Coast, Midwest and South. Those forecasts "are the result of poorly understood atmospheric dynamics," The Christian Science Monitor reports. And, "Given our level of ignorance about what's going on, we don't want to compound that with a level of arrogance by saying we know what's going to happen in a month," says Wisconsin atmospheric scientist Jonathan Miller. Yet supposed climate changes 50 years from now are passed off as "settled science" by global-warming-mongers.

There's a difference, my friends, between short term changes (that's weather) and long term trends (that's climate). But this confusion amongst the scientifically challenged isn't new.

NYTimes in 2008:

Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.

“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.

You'll note that the weather mentioned by Scaife's braintrust is only weather in the US not weather world wide. The global trend is this (source NASA):

See the trend? Now I am sure that within those ups and downs there are even more ups and downs. It's cooler in December than it is in June. It's cooler at night than it is during the day. But the overall trend of the climate is this: it's getting generally warmer all over the planet.

Now onto that embarrassing mistake. Here's the article from the Christian Science Monitor the braintrust is quoting. You might not find the error right off the bat, so let me help you. It's in this stuff, tucked way at the end:

But the pre-Christmas "snow blitz" in the upper Midwest, added to the near-zero wind chills in the South, continue to confound atmospheric scientists like Mr. Martin, who is not keen to make a call on how the Winter of 2011 will pan out.

"Given our level of ignorance about what's going on, we don't want to compound that with a level of arrogance by saying we know what's going to happen in a month," he says.

Martin? Who's Martin? Up the page we find:

"At this point, this winter looks similar to last winter," says Jonathan Martin, an atmospheric scientist at Wisconsin. "The next question is, why does it look similar, and we're currently not in a position to say definitely what's going on. There are some interrelationships between big pieces of circulation anomaly that feed into one another, including an anomalous pattern over Greenland that's tied into convection in the tropical Pacific Ocean."

Oh, that's what happened!

In their zeal to spin the facts to fit their agenda, the braintrust got a simple fact wrong.

It was Jonathan Martin, not Jonathan Miller.

Gee, isn't that embarrassing?

If we can't trust this "news" paper to get such a simple fact straight, then why trust them at all?

The Trib Braintrust Just Can't Stop

With STILL no mention of how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has concluded that global warming is "undeniable" the scientifically challenged Scaife Braintrust trusts the rantings of another of the scientifically challenged, Christopher Booker.

We've met Booker before.

Here's the braintrust this morning:

"Experts" trotted out disputed "science" to buttress predictions of climate cataclysms. Notes British columnist Christopher Booker in The Telegraph, the same United Kingdom National Weather Service computer that predicted a four-degree rise in global temperatures over the next 50 years also "has consistently got every one of its winter and summer forecasts hopelessly wrong" over the past three years.

Here's Booker's article and in it he claims for example:

Far from the oceans acidifying, their pH currently ranges between 7.9 and 8.3, putting them very firmly on the alkaline side of the threshold, at 7.0.

And yet when a real scientist looks at the pH of the ocean the story is different:

The increasing acidity of the world's oceans -- and that acidity's growing threat to marine species -- are definitive proof that the atmospheric carbon dioxide that is causing climate change is also negatively affecting the marine environment, says Antarctic marine biologist Jim McClintock, Ph.D., professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Biology.

Now here's the interesting part:

A substance's level of acidity is measured by its pH value; the lower the pH value, the more acidic is the substance. McClintock says data collected since the pre-industrial age indicates the mean surface pH of the oceans has declined from 8.2 to 8.1 units with another 0.4 unit decline possible by century's end. A single whole pH unit drop would make ocean waters 10 times more acidic, which could rob many marine organisms of their ability to produce protective shells -- and tip the balance of marine food chains.

Now look at what Booker wrote. See the weasel words? The science points to an increasing acidity of the world's oceans (meaning they are getting more acid and less alkaline). This is dismissed by Booker because the pH is "still on the alkaline side of the "threshold."

In any event, let's see what some some real scientists have to say:

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration say the 2010 meteorological year, which ran from December 2009 to November 2010, was the warmest in 131 years of of record keeping.

The world’s average temperature in 2010 was 14.65 degrees Celsius, or 58.57 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2005, the former front-runner for warmest meteorological year, the temperature was 14.62 degrees Celsius, or 58.32 degrees Fahrenheit.

NOAA says it's undeniable.

That "asbestos is the same as talcum powder" guy says otherwise.

Who would you believe?

And who does Scaife's braintrust?

The Trib Gets It Wrong On Climate. Again.

Like that old schoolyard game of "telephone", Scaife's braintrust at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review gets some very important details wrong.

Isn't a newspaper (or even a "news" paper like the Trib) supposed to, you know, get is basic facts straight?

Take a look:

The "progressive" Chicken Littles are at it again, this time in Cancun at the United Nations gathering of global-warming cluckers. The Telegraph of London reports that Professor Kevin Anderson presented a paper claiming that "the only way to reduce global emissions enough — while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow — is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next 20 years." Pecans apparently still are in season.

The whole hub-bub over Anderson's "rationing" suggestion comes from this article in the Daily Telegraph (and even they spin). The Trib's spins on the Telegraph's spin.

In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.

Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts and mass migration.

As the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change, the influential academics called for much tougher measures to cut carbon emissions.

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

Now take a look at this blog. Keep in mind that the blog's writer, Donna Laframboise, is something of a climate skeptic (She calls the IPCC report The Climate Bible and is writing a book called Decoding the Climate Bible: Almost Nothing You’ve Heard About the UN’s Global Warming Report is True. She writes:

A news article in yesterday’s Telegraph newspaper has sparked a mini firestorm in the climate blogosphere. That article was titled: Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world.

Note the use of the plural. If one reads the article closely, though, only one person discusses rationing – Kevin Anderson, a UK professor of energy and climate change who also serves as director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

The article implies that rationing is being advocated by a collection of journal articles published by the Royal Society, but this is not the case. I electronically searched all 14 of those articles. None of them contain the word “ration” – or appear to discuss the concept – not even the paper for which Anderson is the lead author.

The closest she gets to finding anything in the paper resembling what the Telegraph (and, by extension, the Trib) says was in Anderson's paper was what she found in the paper's conclusion:

...the logic of such studies suggest (extremely) dangerous climate change can only be avoided if economic growth is exchanged, at least temporarily, for a period of planned austerity within [rich] nations...

That's it. Laframboise concludes that the writer of the Telegraph piece:

...who appears to have interviewed Anderson, fails to make it clear that the bit about rationing represents Anderson’s personal opinion. It is highly misleading to suggest, as her article does, that this measure enjoys the support of “physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions.”

And yet the Trib said he "presented a paper" at the Conference calling for rationing. Why can't they get their climate facts straight? They could have just pointed out what Laframboise wrote, that Anderson has been advocating rationing for years. But then they couldn't slam the Cancun Conference, could they?

I found all this stuff in about 30 minutes. Why couldn't they?

Embarrassing, isn't it?

The Braintrust Spins on Climage Change. Again.

From today's Sunday Pops at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

New research suggests that all those predictions of markedly higher sea levels because of melting Antarctic ice sheets are wrong. In fact, the research says sea levels will fall — because of decreased gravitational pull and the fact that the bedrock will rise as the weight of the ice drops. The study comes out of Harvard, much to the chagrin, we're sure, of the Chicken Little crowd. Honey, throw another log on the fire — it's still cold outside.

But let's take a closer look, my droogs.

Here's the study's nearly incomprehensible summary:

Climate change could potentially destabilize marine ice sheets, which would affect projections of future sea-level rise. Specifically, an instability mechanism has been predicted for marine ice sheets such as the West Antarctic ice sheet that rest on reversed bed slopes, whereby ice-sheet thinning or rising sea level leads to irreversible retreat of the grounding line. However, existing analyses of this instability mechanism have not accounted for deformational and gravitational effects that lead to a sea-level fall at the margin of a rapidly shrinking ice sheet. Here we present a suite of predictions of gravitationally self-consistent sea-level change following grounding-line migration. Our predictions vary the initial ice-sheet size and also consider the contribution to sea-level change from various subregions of the simulated ice sheet. Using these results, we revisit a canonical analysis of marine-ice-sheet stability and demonstrate that gravity and deformation-induced sea-level changes local to the grounding line contribute a stabilizing influence on ice sheets grounded on reversed bed slopes. We conclude that accurate treatments of sea-level change should be incorporated into analyses of past and future marine-ice-sheet dynamics.

You will note, of course, that the study does NOT deny Climate change. It doesn't deny the temperature rising. It doesn't deny the ice sheet melting. Scaife's braintrust only wants you to make an artifical connection: the sea water won't be rising even though the "hoaxers" have said so - this Harvard study thus undermines another part of "global warming hoax" so we can be even more skeptical of the rest.

But does the study say what the braintrust says it says?

No.

Take a look at some of the press following the report. Like this one from New Scientist:

The vast ice sheets of the Antarctic may be more stable than we thought, because a key piece of physics has been overlooked.

Glaciologists have long worried that the West Antarctic ice sheet will collapse over the next few centuries, raising sea levels dramatically. At present the ice sheet is grounded on underwater islands, which insulate some of the ice from the melting effect of the seawater upon which the rest of the sheet floats. But because the ice has started to melt because of climate change, more water is probably flowing underneath the sheet over the surface of the islands, accelerating its destruction.

The ice sheet has a defence mechanism, however. As it melts, sea levels around it will fall, say Natalya Gomez and Jerry Mitrovica of Harvard University and colleagues. That is counterintuitive, because the ice sheet will release extra water into the sea – but because the mass of ice has shrunk, its gravitational pull on the seawater will be weaker. Also, the bedrock will rise up as the weight of ice on it drops.

"You get a fall in sea level within 2000 kilometres of the ice sheet," Mitrovica says. This means there will be less water sloshing around the sheet's base, so it will last longer. "It will slow down the retreat," says Gomez. [emphases added.]

So this is a much more local thing than the Trib wants you to believe. Look again. The study is asserting something the Trib wants you to doubt: the temperature is rising.

Hey, Remember That "Hockey Stick" Graph?

The report debunking it was plagiarized. How's that for academic integrity?

Much like how the Tribune-Review editorial board has yet to (as far as I know) even mention that NOAA has concluded that global warming is "undeniable", I am not expecting my good friends on Scaife's braintrust to cover this story any time soon.

It's from the USAToday and it's about that report that "debunked" the Michael Mann's "Hockey Stick" graph. Turns out things ain't looking so good for the climate deniers:

An influential 2006 congressional report that raised questions about the validity of global warming research was partly based on material copied from textbooks, Wikipedia and the writings of one of the scientists criticized in the report, plagiarism experts say.

Review of the 91-page report by three experts contacted by USA TODAY found repeated instances of passages lifted word for word and what appear to be thinly disguised paraphrases.

The report, by the way, is the so-called "Wegman Report" commissioned by Congressman Joe Barton. He's the guy who apologized to BP for the Guv'ment's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf.

USAToday reporter Vergano does toss the skeptics a bone anyway with his next paragraph:

The charges of plagiarism don't negate one of the basic premises of the report — that climate scientists used poor statistics in two widely noted papers.

This is a non sequitur, of course, because even if Mann et al used "poor statistics" it didn't make any difference at all as the temperature still went up. Vergano points out a few paragraphs later:

A 2006 report by the National Research Council (NRC), which examines scientific disputes under a congressional charter, largely validated Mann, Bradley and the other climate scientists, according to Texas A&M's Gerald North, the panel's head. The NRC report found that Wegman report-style criticisms of the type of statistics used in 1998 and 1999 papers were reasonable but beside the point, as many subsequent studies had reproduced their finding that the 20th century was likely the warmest one in centuries.

Here's the irony:

But the allegations come as some in Congress call for more investigations of climate scientists like the one that produced the Wegman report.

"It kind of undermines the credibility of your work criticizing others' integrity when you don't conform to the basic rules of scholarship," Virginia Tech plagiarism expert Skip Garner says.

If you don't think this is a big deal, just imagine what would happen in the rightwing noise machine (and their enablers in the mainstream media) if the shoe were on the other foot. If an influential report supporting climate science were found to be plagiarized.

I am sure Joe Barton would demand hearings on it.

This time? Probably not.

More On GOP Scientific Ignorance

Let me say that there is no automatic link connecting the scientifically ignorant to the politically conservative. There are many conservatives who've not sipped the "global warming is a hoax" kool-aid. Some even here in the the US.

Here's one, Sherwood Boehlert:

Why do so many Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world's top scientific academies and scientists are wrong? I would like to be able to chalk it up to lack of information or misinformation.

I can understand arguments over proposed policy approaches to climate change. I served in Congress for 24 years. I know these are legitimate areas for debate. What I find incomprehensible is the dogged determination by some to discredit distinguished scientists and their findings.

In a trio of reports released in May, the prestigious and nonpartisan National Academy concluded that "a strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." Our nation's most authoritative and respected scientific body couldn't make it any clearer or more conclusive.

In his op-ed, Boehlert links to this piece from the National Journal which beings talking about a scientifically literate politician:

When British Foreign Secretary William Hague visited the U.S. last week, he placed combating climate change near the very top of the world's To Do list.

"Climate change is perhaps the 21st century's biggest foreign-policy challenge," Hague declared in a New York City speech. "An effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity." The danger was no longer just distant thunder, he suggested, warning that the recent devastating floods in Pakistan heralded the sort of extreme events that will become more common in a warmer world. "While no one weather event can ever be linked with certainty to climate change," he said, "the broad patterns of abnormality seen this year are consistent with climate-change models."

William Hague is not a holdover from the left-leaning Labor Government that British voters ousted last spring. He's not even from the centrist Liberal Democrats who are governing in a coalition with the Conservative Party of Prime Minister David Cameron. Hague is one of Cameron's predecessors as Conservative Party leader.

And Hague isn't the only European conservative to get the science right:

Just for the record, when the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences last reviewed the data this spring, it concluded: "A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems." Not only William Hague but such other prominent European conservatives as French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have embraced that widespread scientific conviction and supported vigorous action.

It's just in the GOP that scientific illiteracy seems to be a default idea:

Indeed, it is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here. Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says that although other parties may contain pockets of climate skepticism, there is "no party-wide view like this anywhere in the world that I am aware of."

It will be difficult for the world to move meaningfully against climate disruption if the United States does not. And it will be almost impossible for the U.S. to act if one party not only rejects the most common solution proposed for the problem (cap-and-trade) but repudiates even the idea that there is a problem to be solved.

But this is all moot. Know why? Because Congressman Shimkus said that because God promised Noah He would not to destroy after the flood (Genesis 8:21-22).

Science, schmience! That's the GOP party line.

Yet Again...

Scaife's braintrust over at the Tribune-Review tries, yet again, to claim some sort of upper hand regarding climate science.

And they make a huge embarrassing blunder doing it.

Take a look:

If the work of blame-mankind climate "scientists" were unimpeachable, they wouldn't be gearing up for a charm offensive.

Seven hundred global-warming doomsayers have agreed to defend their dubious "science" publicly under the auspices of the American Geophysical Union. And 39 Chicken Littles have signed up for a separate "climate rapid response team" organized by a professor at Minnesota's St. Thomas University for deployment to radio and TV talk shows.

So what's so embarrassing about that?

Simple. It was published November 13 and the American Geophysical Union has already released a statement 5 days ago saying the initial reporting at the LA Times was "innacurate."

Did the Trib miss it? Did they not bother to check? What an embarrassment - either way.

More embarrassing is the braintrust's continuing denial of reality:

Both efforts smack of increasing desperation fueled by the blame-mankind crowd's credibility crumbling beneath the weight of the scandalous Climategate e-mails, which show data manipulation, and greater public recognition of their leftist big-government agenda. That's why skeptics of global-warming orthodoxy make up half of the new GOP members just elected to Congress.

Climategate? They're resting this on Climategate?

From the AP, March 30, 2010:

The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world's leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved.

The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee said Wednesday that it had seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming — two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.

In its report, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, "the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact," adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that "global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity."

From the Science Assessment Panel, April 10, 2010:

We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal.

From the NYTimes, July 7, 2010:

A British panel on Wednesday exonerated the scientists caught up in the controversy known as Climategate of charges that they had manipulated their research to support preconceived ideas about global warming.

But the panel also rebuked the scientists for several aspects of their behavior, especially their reluctance to release computer files supporting their scientific work. And it declared that a chart they produced in 1999 about past climate was “misleading.”

The new report is the last in a series of investigations of leading British and American climate researchers, prompted by the release of a cache of e-mail messages that cast doubt on their conduct and raised fresh public controversy over the science of global warming.

All five investigations have come down largely on the side of the climate researchers, rejecting a number of criticisms raised by global-warming skeptics. Still, mainstream climate science has not emerged from the turmoil unscathed.

Some polls suggest that the recent controversy has eroded public support for action on climate change, complicating the politics of that issue in Washington and other world capitals. And leading climate researchers have come in for criticism of their deportment, of their episodic reluctance to share data with climate skeptics, and for not always responding well to critical analysis of their work.

“The e-mails don’t at all change the fundamental tenets of the science,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado. “But they changed the notion that people could blindly trust one authoritative group, when it turns out they’re just like everybody else.”

I take it there are more reports exonerating the CPU. Not that it matters. It's like the braintrust inhabits a different reality. Where is their evidence that "climategate" is anything other than a faded photograph of a puff of smoke in a hall of mirrors?

They don't have any because that evidence doesn't exist. All they have is the (false) assertion that Climategate somehow undermined the science.

It didn't.

Repeating the lie that it did doesn't make it so.

Speaking of rightwing climate change crazie, get a gander at this from the Toronto Star:

U.S. Representative John Shimkus, possible future chairman of the Congressional committee that deals with energy and its attendant environmental concerns, believes that climate change should not concern us since God has already promised not to destroy the Earth.

Some background:

During a hearing in 2009, he dismissed the dangers of climate change and the warnings of the scientific community by quoting the Bible.

First, he noted God’s post-Flood promise to Noah in Genesis 8:21-22.

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though all inclinations of his heart are evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

“As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.”

“I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation,” Shimkus said.

Then he quoted Matthew 24:31.

“And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other.”

“The Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a Flood,” Shimkus asserted. “I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”

While I usually think the lines from the 11th century poet unfair as the distiction between those with brains and those with religion is too harshly drawn, in this instance Abul'-Ala' al-Ma'arri was more than adequately describing Shimkus when he wrote:

The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts:
Those with brains, but no religion,
And those with religion, but no brains.

Such unending and frightening ignorance. Even more frightening that it's found a comfortable home deep in the GOP.