New Study Thoroughly Debunks (man-made) Global Warming, Will Media Notice?

I was recently sent an article with the the title on this blog post and asked to comment.  I chased down the source as http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/07/11/new-study-thoroughly-debunks-global-warming-will-media-notice for those who wish to read it.  My reply was . .

I think it is important not to let personal biases cloud one’s judgment of the science or not to let the misguided exuberance of such people as Michael Mann or James Hansen or ignorance of Al Gore detract from the actual science.  As I continue to read reports on both sides of this argument, it evident that neither is addressing the valid issues.  As often the case in such political discourse, the combatants are talking past each other.  

What also makes this contention more difficult to assess is one side, the “warmists,” is “the keeper of the keys.” The contrarians do not have direct access to the data which immediate has them claiming conspiracy.  The “warmists” are naively playing directly into that game and violating one of science’s fundamental practices to always make the data readily available for critique. However, what I hope to do in my publication is to ignore the misdirection created by these failures and to bring science back into the evaluation.

Every scientific theory has had such disagreement.  The most famous is Einstein’s refusal to accept quantum mechanics which became one of physical science’s most successful accomplishments. Validation of the theory is how well does it predict the outcome of the experiments.  The article which I shared at the beginning of this thread suggests the “warmists’” models are doing quite well and the contrarians’ models are failing quite significantly.  It may be a matter of accidental coincidence, but that should be the focus of the effort of the contrarians to demonstrate and not to “cherry pick.”

An interesting observation one can make of the graph in your article is the “hockey stick” similar to that of Mann in the years post-1995 that the author fails to acknowledge.  The article appeared in Newsbusters, much like FoxNews, whose mission seems to be to introduce bias into the “news stream.”  I saw this report back in the summer, since it was splattered all over the conservative blogs, but has died without validation.

One thing I have found with the contrarian argument is they routinely exaggerate the significance of a failure in the warmists’ claim, such as the distortions in the data of the CRU and Climategate.  When the data is corrected and the human personality errors acknowledged, the interpretation or implication is seldom significantly modified.  Facts that the contrarians seldom acknowledge. It is as if the contrarians have adopted a strategy of throwing around crap with the hope that some of it sticks rather engaging in an honest evaluation of the results.

I have also seen the pre-politics for the upcoming release of the fifth IPCC report.  What I am going to try to do is compile the arguments of both sides in advance of the release and see who is the most honest.  

At this point I think the warmists are regaining their lost lead in this debate.  If they are careful not to get sloppy in the fifth IPCC report and to project objectivity (i.e. keep those previously discredited far away), they are likely to squash the contrarians fairly decisively.