By now you have probably heard that even hiding the decline was not considered unethical, supposedly. Not only does the report whitewash the climategate scandal, but the NYT tries to as well. The money quote:
The issue involved an effort to reconstruct the climate history of the past several thousand years using indirect indicators like the size of tree rings and the growth rate of corals. The C.R.U. researchers, leaders in that type of work, were trying in 1999 to produce a long-term temperature chart that could be used in a United Nations publication.
But they were dogged by a problem: Since around 1960, for mysterious reasons, trees have stopped responding to temperature increases in the same way they apparently did in previous centuries. If plotted on a chart, tree rings from 1960 forward appear to show declining temperatures, something that scientists know from thermometer readings is not accurate.
Most scientific papers have dealt with this problem by ending their charts in 1960 or by grafting modern thermometer measurements onto the historical reconstructions.
See, we don’t have any kind of temperature data going back before around 1850. So in order to estimate the temperature, they studied tree rings and the like, on the theory that tree rings correspond roughly to temperature.
Meanwhile some evil, corporate, hack scientists said that tree rings didn’t correspond closely enough to real world temperatures to provide an accurate measure.
The problem, of course, for the good, pure scientists of the global warmonger movement is that, well, it turned out that during the 1960’s tree ring data and temperature diverged. And they don’t know why.
But don’t worry, they are certain that the rest of the time there was no divergence, because... um, why exactly? I mean if it diverged in the 60’s, couldn’t it just as easily diverge in other times?
This is what passes for science these days.
If they were smart, they would have condemned the data, and then quickly cooked up new data to support their forgone conclusion. But instead, they tried the “move along now, nothing to see here” routine and made their unscientific behavior plain to anyone with eyes and logic to see. And the NYT is there to sell their little fairy tale.
By the way, exit question. How many of the very same people who believe in a plot to assassinate JFK also simultaneously believe in global warming with slack-jawed credulity.
