In case you haven't noticed the subtle redefinition of the global warming question, it's a lot like the last 1000 or so re-definitions. It could be described as several parts deception that have been partially digested by a straw man. Let's start by taking a look at an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled; Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming.
A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.
The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.
But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."
In fact, Richard Muller is a warmer, always has been. He seems to like playing the diplomatic mitigator of the apparent difficulties with global warming theory. In a Technology Review article in 2003, he characterized criticisms of Michael Mann's hockey stick as part of a complex scientific process, a parley into defending Mann. This is about as far as his longtime criticism of government studies goes in recognizing the legitimate concerns of skeptics. In the same article, he says:
Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate. I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.
Not exactly the model global warming skeptic. In fact, use of the word “pollutant” suggests a path straight from Muller to the EPA's unconstitutional attempt to take control of private industry. I can't imagine that many were really surprised that he supported the left in a congressional hearing.
Pretending warmers are converted skeptics has become a common ploy, but the deception goes deeper. It's fundamentally important to look at the main straw man. It's apparent enough in the LA Times article. I'll start with that and add another to partly illustrate its appetite for deception.
The enormous surprise, as the story goes, was some kind of confirmation that there's been a warming trend. Put this on the back of 100s of “environmental journalists” and left-wing bloggers constantly characterizing “skeptics” as “climate change deniers” and so on. It's typical for warmers to complain that non-believers are people who don't believe that average temperatures vary over time, as though they believe that climate is entirely static.
More-so, they don't believe there's been a warming trend. They couldn't of course, if they believe climate is static. If you've fallen for it, it could very easily seem that confirmation of a warming trend would crush the opposing argument. If you're not so naive, and knowledgeable enough about the debate, you would have immediately recognized the title phrase “scientific consensus on global warming” as an unscientific leftist fantasy.
What might be called the “consensus” criticism is that temperature variations occur naturally and always have. (Which actually puts warmers in the dunderhead class for not readily acknowledging the fact.) Warmers have shown neither that recent changes in average temperatures are unusual nor that they are scarey. The weight of the evidence indicates that modern industrial human activity has very very little to do with it – even if atmospheric CO2 were a major contributing factor. This case has been strengthened enormously in recent years as the lack of cause and effect between CO2 and temperature change has become so extremely obvious. But what about the warming trend? Most critics of global warming politics generally accepted that there was a warming trend in the latter half of the 20th century.
I learned about the LA Times article through a link at AccuWeather where I had read a short article entitled, Coolest March since 1994. Here we find another similar deception that's become popular among warmers. The title pretends that the article supports skeptics and invites the common every day ordinary citizen skeptic to post the link to all their favorite web hangouts. All the information above the first image supports the idea. This March was the coolest March globally since 1994.
The article gives warmers the last word however, dashing the hopes of anyone who's prematurely concluded that it provides further evidence of a cooling trend. The evidence is contained in the following partially unlabeled graph. “Despite the recent cooling”, the text reads, “the decadal temperature trend for the lower troposphere remains upward at + .145C.
Digging into the data on which the graph is constructed, we find the left-most data-point is given for the year 1979. The right end of the graph is for March 2011. If you've been paying attention to the global warming debate much, that first year might ring a bell. You may know that there was a cooling trend from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s. “Climate scientists,” even some of the same trying to frighten us about warming now, were preaching global cooling and warning of the possibility of a coming ice-age (a fact that really irks the warmers – Google and see).
At the end of the 1970s, it was relatively cool. So of course, if you find the coldest point in recent history – and we aren't continuing unabated into an ice-age – everything from there will be part of a warming trend – at least for a while. Let's put the trend from 1979 to the late 1990s in a different perspective by taking a broader look at temperature change – over the whole century.
These deceptions pale by comparison to the impact of Phil Jones (CRU), a researcher at East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Jones, made globally famous by Climategate. Jones created modified data sets using select data sources and mixed data inputs as tricks to “hide declines” and otherwise support the case for global warming hysteria. The data didn't support global warming “theory,” so he constructed fake data sets to correspond with the “theory.”
More than anyone, Jones demonstrated just how truly despicable warmers are when he went beyond rewriting the Earth's temperature history for the sake of his own scientifically unsupportable arguments. He made a global effort to replace all real temperature data with his own “reconstructed” data. He also requested that temperature data centers around the world mischaracterize his data as their original. According to his own testimony in a UK Parliament hearing, only three countries declined. (The United States was not one of those countries.)
It doesn't matter what sort of statistical analysis is performed on the data. It can't reveal the truth if the data isn't real. (Invalidating even the very limited straw man arguments by Muller and others that are based on analysis of the data.) When investigation of Jones' activities fell off the track into a warmer propaganda party, the last chance for warmers to claim a scientific argument went with it. By not sacrificing Jones and others of Climategate fame and leaking some truth into the debate at that point, party operatives eliminated any possibility of recovering the lost credibility of available data. All they have to offer now on the latter half of the 20th century are demonstrations of garbage-in, garbage-out.
Unfortunately, this means that researchers around the world will not be able to trust the data – no matter how objective and honest they would like to be. For the moment, and for many years to come, “climate science” based on historical temperature records is about as viable as dust on a loafer.
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