Gotta Love Climate “Science” and the New York Times

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. 

Also I should totally create a shirt.  Just a citation to a website and the words, “Hide the Decline.”  Besides that specific meaning, it has a fun kind of irony to it.

Global Warming Meltdown

Earlier, I shared my view on man-caused global warming (often called AGW).  Here’s just some of the evidence I see piling up every day that the whole thing is at best founded on really bad science, and at worst an actual fraud.  Time for some linky goodness.

IPCC warnings of African crop yields turn out to be bogus, too.

This is an oldie but goodie explaining what decline they have been hiding.

And a bombshell set of admissions from Professor Jones.  You know, like there has been no global warming in fifteen years.

But then he turns around and tries to shift the burden to skeptics.  See we are so certain of man-caused global warming, that now you have to disprove it.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds has more linky goodness.  And more.  And then draws a historical comparison.

And the Climategate story has officially become too big to ignore.

And this might be the quote of the century on ClimateGate: “I don’t think the credibility of the IPCC can be dented. If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?”

And the OC Register has a really nice summary of all of the scandals.  The problem is that it is dated last Friday, so surely, it is woefully out of date by now.  Really it’s like computer obscellescence on steroids.

And James Taranto tears into global warming and decides it might all really be a scam.  Really, Taranto is a daily must read.  So if you want to see a link that will work every day when he writes a new column, use this.

Oh, Bill Nye... Why?

You know, I like Bill Nye normally.  I mean I had enjoyed his odd sense of humor since all the way back in his days on Almost Live.  He was just starting this “science guy” shtick with crazy experiments which weren’t very scientific, but were pretty funny.  I particularly loved a bit where he answered science questions.  In one a viewer asked that if you were in a falling elevator, if you could save your life by jumping just before you hit the ground.  He demonstrated that you would be screwed in that situation, by rigging a model elevator with an automatic “pop-up” near the bottom.  Then he puts an egg in, sets the thing off and, well, yolk happens.  It’s probably funnier to see it than I described, but I couldn’t find a youtube clip.

So its more than a little disappointing to see him say it is almost unpatriotic to doubt humans cause climate change.