Several people have asked whether there seems to be a concerted effort to restart the public’s wise, rapidly dwindly concern about man-made global warming. The answer is a big yes. This behavior was predicted by Leon Festinger in his book about cultism “When Prophecies Fail” back in the 1950s. Expect the level of rhetoric and anger and a stream of garbage reports along with attacks on skeptics to increase. The public should rise up against the co-conspirators in the media, academia and government who attempting to increase their power and control over all our lives through the BIG LIE.

You won’t read stories that challenge the scare story like this. H/T Marc Morano

As further proof of their guilt, see how the board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has issued a statement demanding that all attacks on global warming advocates cease. Sorry boys, we are just warming up (no pun intended). Joe Romm was just voted a fellow of the AAAS which should speak volumes.

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Reality denier: Warmist Peter Gleick argues that climate realists are a “diminishing community”; he suggests that while he’s allegedly a “real” scientist, Bob Carter isn’t
Tom Nelson Blogspot

Climate Change Skeptics Unite At Heartland Conference

Heartland Institute communications director Jim Lakely said it’s a “myth” that only skeptics are invited to the conference.

President of the Pacific Institute Peter Gleick, a scientist who supports the findings behind man-induced climate change, said he wouldn’t consider attending.

“I go to many meetings as it is, and the interesting science is being done elsewhere,” he said on a “pre-buttal” conference call hosted by the Center For American Progress. “This is not a science conference, it’s a political conference. It’s a way for a small community—and I would argue a diminishing community—to get together in a self-support kind of way. There is no science that’s going to be discussed there that’s new or that’s interesting ... it’s just not worth a real scientist’s time.”

So Peter then you had no reason not to attend.

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Mistaking Numerology for Math
Posted on June 28, 2011 by Willis Eschenbach on WUWT

I always love seeing what Science magazine thinks is important. In their June 10th edition, in their “BY THE NUMBERS” section, they quote Nature Climate Change magazine, viz:

1,211,287 Square kilometers of ice road-accessible Arctic lands that will be unreachable by 2050, a 14% decrease, according to a report online 29 May in Nature Climate Change.

I busted out laughing. Sometimes the AGW supporters’ attempts to re-inflate the climate alarmism balloon are an absurd burlesque of the scientific method.

Truly, you couldn’t make this stuff up. I love it that they claim to know, to an accuracy of one square kilometre, both a) the current amount of Arctic lands reachable by ice roads around the globe and b) how that amount will change over the next forty years.

People continue to be perplexed that what they like to call the “scientific message of the dangers of climate change” is not reaching the US public. Over and over it is said to be a communications problem … which I suppose could be true, but only if “communications” is shorthand for “trying to get us to swallow yet another incredible claim”.

The idea that a hyper-accurate claim like that would not only get published in a peer-reviewed journal, but would be cited by another peer-reviewed journal, reveals just how low the climate science bar is these days. Mrs. Henniger, my high school science teacher, would have laughed such a claim out of the classroom. “Significant digits!” she would thunder. “What did your books say about significant digits”.

“The output of a mathematical operation can’t have more significant digits than the smallest number of significant digits in any of the inputs,” someone would say, and the class would grind on.

This waving of spurious accuracy is useful in one way, however. When someone does that, it is a valuable reminder to check your wallet - you can be pretty sure that they are trying to sell you something.

Because scientific studies have shown that when someone comes up with hyper-accurate numbers for their results, in 94.716% of the reported cases, what they are selling is as bogus as their claimed accuracy.

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UN climate panel to examine extreme events

The chairman of a top U.N. climate panel says it will release a new report in November examining the link between climate change and extreme events like floods and drought that are taking place around the world.

Rajendar Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told reporters Tuesday that the panel has already reported that extreme events are increasing.

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NOAA Defies The Most Fundamental Laws Of Physics
Posted on June 29, 2011 by stevengoddard
(AFP) - 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON - Greenland’s ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US government scientists said Tuesday in one of a series of “unmistakable” signs of climate change.

“The world continues to warm,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a briefing paper for reporters.

“Multiple indicators, same bottom-line conclusion: consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans.”

If the ice sheets are melting down, then the melted water has to go into the ocean. Sea level has to rise. Problem is, sea level plummeted during the hottest year ever - 2010.

Enlarged.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/

Proving once again that you don’t have to know any science to be a climate scientist. In fact, it helps if you don’t.

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Published paper showed that Greenland temperatures were higher in the 1930’s, 1940s and 1700’s and multiple other times than at present

The paper published in the journal Climate of the Past illustrates three different temperature reconstructions of southwest Greenland, which show temperatures were higher than the present in the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1700’s, and multiple other times over the past 700 years when CO2 levels were lower.  Arctic land where current climatic conditions are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to many of the latest peer-reviewed scientific findings.  Research in 2006 found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880’s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955.

The 2006 study found Greenland has cooled since the 1930’s and 1940’s, with 1941 being the warmest year on record. Another 2006 study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland’s ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies.  These studies suggest that the biggest perceived threat to Greenland’s glaciers may be contained in unproven computer models predicting a future catastrophic melt. 

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NOAA CHIMES IN TRYING TO SAVE THEIR CLIMATE CENTER BUDGET: Global warming continues as greenhouse gas grows

The world’s climate is not only continuing to warm, it’s adding heat-trapping greenhouse gases even faster than in the past, researchers said Tuesday. Indeed, the global temperature has been warmer than the 20th century average every month for more than 25 years, they said at a teleconference. “The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm,” Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center, said in releasing the annual State of the Climate report for 2010. “There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans,” added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellite.

Roger Pielke Sr. replies to NOAA It is disappointing that the media do not properly question the claims made by Tom Karl and Peter Thorne. They are presenting a biased report on the actual state of the climate system.

Peter Thorne is misrepresenting the actual data when he erroneously reports that (assuming he means ‘unequivocal warming’ “There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans”.

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Reply to article: Co founder of. Greenpeace Patrick Moore weighs in against “Highly-venomous jelly fish closer to British waters as global warming causes biggest shift of marine life in two million years”

Posted by Co2sceptic on Jun 29th 2011 views 22 CLICK for source article.

There have been Portuguese Man o’War washing up at my town of Winter Harbour on northern Vancouver Island since I was a kid. They are all over the oceans and no doubt the Gulf Stream brings them north to Europe. I do not recommend being stung by them, it is very painful.

They say “The Northwest Passage, the route through the frigid archipelago from Alaska across northern Canada, has been ice-free from one end to the other only twice in rec orded history, in 1998 and 2007.”

“Recorded history” is since 1979 when the first satellite photos of sea ice extent were begun. There is no “recorded history of the extent of ice before 1979.

I saw another story from this Project Clamer today about the first Gray whale sighting in the Atlantic, actually the Med near Israel, since they were hunted to extinction in the Atlantic in the 1700s. It must have swum from the Pacific side through the Northwest Passage, or over the top of Russia. This was portrayed as an omen of doom rather than something to celebrate. Amundsen traveled through the Northwest Passage in 1904 or so, and the St, Rock in 1944 twice, so if a wooden boat could get through so could a Gray whale. But no, this is a sure sign that catastrophic climate change is at hand: here

They are basically blaming every change they see on global warming, even the return of a species that was native to the Atlantic for millions of years.

Regards

Patrick Moore

Professor Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California in San Diego, claims to be a science historian.  One can readily demonstrate that she is neither a credible scientist nor a credible historian; the best evidence is right there in her recent book, “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,” coauthored with Eric Conway.  Her science is faulty; her historical procedures are thoroughly unprofessional.  She is, however, an accomplished polemicist, who has found time for world lecture tours, promoting her book and her ideological views, while being paid by the citizens of California.  Her book tries to smear four senior physicists—of whom I am the only surviving one.  I view it as my obligation to defend the reputations of my late colleagues and good friends against her libelous charges.

Oreskes is well-known from her 2004 article in Science that claimed a complete scientific consensus about manmade global warming; it launched her career as a polemicist.  Her claim was based on examining the abstracts of some 900 published papers.  Unfortunately, she missed more than 11,000 papers through an incorrect Internet search.  She published a discreet “Correction”; yet she has never retracted her ideologically based claim about consensus.  Al Gore still quotes her result, which has been contradicted by several, more competent studies (by Peiser, Schulte, Bray and von Storch; Lemonick in SciAm, etc).

Turning first to the her science, her book discusses acidification, as measured by the pH coefficient.  She states that a pH of 6.0 denotes neutrality (page 67, MoD).  Let’s be charitable and chalk this off to sloppy proofreading.

Elsewhere in the book (page 29), she claims that beryllium is a “heavy metal” and tries to back this up with references.  I wonder if she knows that the atomic weight of beryllium is only 9, compared to, say, uranium, which is mostly 238.  A comparison of these two numbers should tell anyone which one is the heavy metal.

Her understanding of the Greenhouse Effect is plain comical; she posits that CO2 is “trapped” in the troposphere—and that’s why the stratosphere is cooling.  Equally wrong is her understanding of what climate models are capable of; she actually believes that they can predict forest fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan and China—nothing but calamities everywhere—and tells climate scientists in a recent lecture: If the predictions of climate models have come true, then why don’t people believe them [see this]?  Perhaps because people are not gullible.

But the most amazing science blunder in her book is her hypothesis about how cigarette-smoking causes cancer (page 28).  She blames it on oxygen-15, a radioactive isotope of the common oxygen-16.  I wonder if she knows that the half-life of O-15 is only 122 seconds.  Of course, she does not spell out how O-15 gets into cigarette smoke, whether it is in the paper or in the tobacco itself.  If the latter, does she believe that the O-15 is created by the burning of tobacco?  If so, this would be a fantastic discovery, worthy of an alchemist.  Perhaps someone should make her aware of the difference between radioactive and “reactive” oxygen; the two words do sound similar.

I am sure one would find more examples of scientific ignorance in a careful reading of the rest of the book.  But why bother?

Having demonstrated her scientific “expertise,” let’s turn to her historical expertise.  Any careful historian would use primary sources and would at least try to interview the scientists she proceeds to smear.  There is no trace of that in Oreskes’ book.  She has never taken the trouble to interview Dr. Robert Jastrow, founder of the NASA-Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and later Director of the Mt. Wilson Astronomical Observatory and founding president of the renowned George C Marshall Institute in Washington, DC.  I can find no evidence that she ever interviewed Dr. William Nierenberg, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who actually lived in San Diego and was readily accessible.  And I doubt if she ever even met Dr. Frederick Seitz, the main target of her venom.

Seitz was the most distinguished of the group of physicists that are attacked in the book.  He had served as President of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the American Physical Society, and later as President of Rockefeller University.  He had been awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities here and abroad, as well as the prestigious National Medal of Science from the White House.

Instead of seeking firsthand information in the tradition of historical research, Oreskes relies on secondary or tertiary sources, quoting people who agree with her ideology.  A good example of this is her discussion of acid rain and of the White House panel (under Reagan, in 1982) chaired by Bill Nierenberg, on which I also served.  Here she relies on what she was told by Dr. Gene Likens, whose research funding depends on portraying acid rain as a very serious environmental problem.  It most definitely is not—and indeed disappeared from view as soon as Congress passed legislation designed to reduce the effect.

An amazing discovery: I found that Oreskes gives me credit (or blames me) for inventing “cap-and-trade,” the trading of emission rights under a fixed cap of total emissions (see pp. 91-93).  I had never claimed such a priority because I honestly don’t know if this idea had been published anywhere.  It seemed like the natural thing to suggest in order to reduce total cost—once an emission cap had been set.  My example involved smelters that emit SO2 copiously versus electric utilities that burn coal containing some sulfur.  I even constructed what amounts to a “supply curve” in which the bulk of the emission control is borne initially by the lowest-cost units.  Of course, Likens and some others on the panel, antagonistic to coal-burning electric utilities, objected to having my discussion included in the panel report.  Nierenberg solved the problem neatly by putting my contribution into a signed Appendix, thereby satisfying some panel members who did not want be responsible for a proposal that might let some electric utilities off the hook. 

We have established so far that Oreskes is neither a scientist of any sort nor a careful professional historian.  She is, however, a “pop-psychologist.” It seems she has figured out what motivates the four senior physicists she libels in her book; it is “anti-communism.” Really!  This is not only stated explicitly but she also identifies them throughout as “Cold Warriors.”

Well, now we know at least where Oreskes stands in the political spectrum.

Over very long periods of time as ice ages come and go, it has been found that temperature leads atmospheric CO2 content by about 800 years. This seems to contradict the IPCC and other views that CO2 causes change in temperature. But we are looking at very different time scales with present changes, so perhaps things happen differently. I decided to examine this question.

The temperature data used is monthly global land-ocean temperature or GHCN, which is available from NOAA. The atmospheric CO2 data used is from Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the longest continuous record of CO2 also available monthly.

When wanting to find the causation when two series are both increasing over time, it is best to look at the rate of change of the variables as this will show clearly which one precedes the other. This first graph shows the rate of change of these two variables monthly over the period 1958 to 2009.

Rate of change of atmospheric CO2 content and land-ocean temperature

Both monthly series were processed in the same way. The change over a 12 month was calculated, and a 12 month simple moving average of these values was used to avoid all seasonal effects. That data was plotted at the centre of the 23 months values used in the calculation. Because the treatment was the same for both variables, they are directly comparable.

It can be seen that there is generally a good correlation, with nearly all peaks in one variable having similar peaks in the other. When one has a smaller peak such as around 1975, then so does the other. When one has a larger peak around 1973 or 1998, then so does the other. there are one or two minor variations from this.

It is also evident that the red temperature graph generally precedes the black CO2 graph on turning points.  This suggests that temperature drives CO2 and not the other way around. A comparison of the two series at different lags gives this second graph.

Correlation between rate of change of global temperature and rate of change of atmospheric CO2 content
When the two series are coincident the correlation is quite small, r=0.13, whereas when temperature change 6 months earlier is compared to to CO2 change there is a maximum correlation of r=0.42 which is a high correlation for short period changes which have a high noise content. There is no high correlation for any lag when CO2 precedes temperature, the best being r=0.15 at 42 months.

It seems that, contrary to popular wisdom, temperature changes are driving atmospheric CO2 content changes, with a lag time of 6 months.

Warmist ‘scientists’ and psuedo-scientists’ are quick to question the role of the sun and oceans in multi-decadal climate changes. We saw the spin machine rush into action after the announcements from the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin about the results of three separate studies that the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity greatly reduced or even eliminated like the Maunder Minimum during the Little ice Age. They swung into action after Don Easterbrook wrote on the implications of the quiet sun with the cooling Pacific and Joe Bastardi’s interview on Fox in which he talked about the ‘Triple Crown of Cooling - a quiet sun, cooling oceans potentially augmented by volcanism.

They won’t and can’t deny ENSO, the short term oscillations in the tropical Pacific that can cause large swings of global temperatures. You may hear them use La Ninas to explain away cool years and can’t wait for the New Year’s day to end when El Nino’s develop to predict the year will be the warmist ever due to greenhouse gases. They will never admit to the multidecadal cycles in the oceans as these might explain some or most of the warming they want you to believe are the result of your driving SUVs and our burning fossil fuels. While Joe Bastardi and I readily admit man has an affect on our climate through factors, especially locally like urbanization, land use changes, the addition of aerosols, etc, we believe natural factors can’t be neglected. We have used them for years successfully in our forecasting and are doing so now every day on WEATHERBELL.

Let’s look at one of these natural drivers, the PDO today.

The “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (PDO) is a long-lived El Nino-like pattern of Pacific climate variability according to scientists at JISAO at the University of Washington.

“While the two climate oscillations have similar spatial climate fingerprints, they have very different behavior in time. Fisheries scientist Steven Hare coined the term “Pacific Decadal Oscillation” (PDO) in 1996 while researching connections between Alaska salmon production cycles and Pacific climate (his dissertation topic with advisor Robert Francis).

Several independent studies find evidence for just two full PDO cycles in the past century: “cool” PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while “warm” PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990’s. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years.”

The PDO index is derived as the leading PC of monthly SST anomalies in the North Pacific Ocean. It was found while researchers at the University of Washington were trying to find reasons why salmon fisheries exhibited a distinct multidecadal behavior.

The landmark paper can be found here: Mantua, N.J. and S.R. Hare, Y. Zhang, J.M. Wallace, and R.C. Francis,1997: A Pacific interdecadal climate oscillation with impacts on salmon production. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 78, pp 1069-1079.

Their abstract:

Evidence gleaned from the instrumental record of climate data identifies a robust, recurring pattern of ocean-atmosphere climate variability centered over the mid-latitude Pacific basin. Over the past century, the amplitude of this climate pattern has varied irregularly at interannual-to-interdecadal time scales. There is evidence of reversals in the prevailing polarity of the oscillation occurring around 1925, 1947, and 1977; the last two reversals correspond with dramatic shifts in salmon production regimes in the North Pacific Ocean. This climate pattern also affects coastal sea and continental surface air temperatures, as well as streamflow in major west coast river systems, from Alaska to California.

The ENSO and PDO climate patterns are clearly related, both spatially and temporally, to the extent that the PDO may be viewed as ENSO-like interdecadal climate variability (Tanimoto et al. 1993; ZWB). While it may be tempting to interpret interdecadal climatic shifts as responses to individual (tropical) ENSO events, it seems equally conceivable that the state of the interdecadal PDO constrains the envelope of interannual ENSO variability.”

The authors made no claim as to which (PDO or ENSO) was the chicken and which the egg.

“The ENSO and PDO climate patterns are clearly related, both spatially and temporally, to the extent that the PDO may be viewed as ENSO-like interdecadal climate variability (Tanimoto et al. 1993; ZWB). While it may be tempting to interpret interdecadal climatic shifts as responses to individual (tropical) ENSO events, it seems equally conceivable that the state of the interdecadal PDO constrains the envelope of interannual ENSO variability.”

Indeed you can see clearly they similarity of the ENSO and the PDO in ‘ocean temperature distribution’ in the two positive PDO Index and El Nino and negative PDO and La Nina.

Enlarged

The temperature correlations over land are almost identical.


Enlarged

You can see support for the paper’s findings of the Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1977. You can support for the flip back in 1999 as Dr. Don Easterbrook found and published and posted on.

Enlarged

During the positive phase see the dominance of more frequent, stronger, longer La Ninas and the positive PDO mode, more frequent, stronger and longer El Ninos.


Enlarged

Enlarged

The PDO is a very useful tool for forecasters. With other ‘teleconnections’ like the AMO, ENSO, QBO, IOD, WP, EPO, solar, we have a good basis for skillful seasonal prediction. There are more tools that help intraseasonally.

Modelers and warmists can’t admit to the PDO or AMOs existence or importance as it would provide an alternative reason for the warming during the period from 1977 to 1998. They have staked out the position that the warming entirely man-made, to keep their gravy train of funding going. They do the same for solar. Mann’s recent claim that man’s induced warming is 20 times more important than solar is laughable. They conveniently focus solely on brightness changes ignoring all the solar amplification factors. Modelers and those who are agenda driven live in a virtual model world whhich they think is reality. Ironically when the data doesn’t jive with their model forecasts, they usually don’t adjust the models but find reasons to ‘correct’ the data to match the models to claim victory.

“When data conflicts with models, a small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data to agree with models’ projections,” MIT meteorologist Dr. Richard Lindzen.

UKMet’s principle research scientist John Mitchell: “People underestimate the power of models. Observational evidence is not very useful,” adding, “Our approach is not entirely empirical.”

In the real world, the PDO is a real ‘natural’ climate driver more reliable for forecasting the future than the climate models. Let us prove it to you on Weatherbell.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: journalism needs less truth, less balance

Today I am in New York on my publicity tour for Watermelons and as I sat at breakfast this morning, chomping on an Ess-a-bagel and reading Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics I found myself wondering - not for the first time ‘ why it is that liberal-lefties manage to be so utterly wrong about everything.

“Because they’re stupid,” said a libertarian friend of mine.

“Oh come on, not all of them surely? A bit misguided, maybe but...” I protested.

“No really they’re stupid because they’re not interested in facts. They just want to construct their pretty little narrative about the world, regardless of whether or not it has any bearing on reality. And then they want to dump it on us. And ruin our lives. So not just stupid but evil too.”

Well, you know me: what a big-hearted, sensitive, caring, emollient kind of guy I am. I thought these words were harsh, really harsh. But that was before I saw this video.

It features Chris Matthews, one of America’s most popular liberal talk show hosts, talking to a liberal journalist from liberal blogsite Salon called Joan Walsh and another liberal journalist from liberal Rolling Stone magazine on the liberal politics programme Hardball. And guess what these liberals believe the problem with Climate Change is? Go on: think of the most stupid, reality-denying, fact-ignoring, evidence-torturing tosh anyone involved in the media could possibly have to say on the subject. (H/T Climate Depot)

Yes, that’s right.
They think that the naughty yellow pixies who pull the special, magic Climat-O-Levers which control the weather have been paid by evil capitalists with fat cigars in their mouth and $ signs on their pinstripe suits to make the world’s climate all horrid so that poor, underprivileged and disabled people and endangered creatures suffer - and that the reason we don’t know about it is because the media is run by evil Conservatives who want to keep this truth a secret.

Well, almost. What these liberal opinion-formers actually think - and you’ve really got to hand it to them: not even a lobotomised amoeba could beat them in a competition for dumbest creature on the planet, these three are absolute champs, Matthews especially, make no mistake - is as follows.
They think the main reasons for the public’s growing scepticism on Climate Change are 1. The media has been far too balanced on the subject and is not pushing the eco-message hard enough. 2. Big business is funding Climate Denialism. 3. Evil Conservatives - led by Evil Talk Show Hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck - are deliberately telling lies about Climate Change. 4. The Republican party is “anti-science”.

My favourite bit is the one where Chris Matthews, who I believe takes himself seriously as a journalist, declares: “I hate that even-handed, so-called objective journalism. You know, you can’t say something isn’t true if it’s true...”

Do you know, on that last point at least I totally agree with Chris Matthews. So let’s examine a few of the claims which he and his two guest liberal echo chambers made on Hardball.

1. The media under-reports climate change. Oh yes. That will explain, for example, the recent widely reported story Decline Of Oceans Worse Than Previously Thought - given unquestioning coverage everywhere from the Sydney Morning Herald, the New York Times and Time magazine to the BBC. Yet as research from Ben Pile at Climate Resistance shows, most of these experts offering their supposed expert views on the imminence of pelagic climate doom were in fact just an ad hoc group of activists from heavily politicised organisations like Greenpeace and Pew Environment Group. Such is the state of Environmental reporting around the world these days: it consists of little more than lovingly transcribed press releases from hardcore ecoloon pressure groups.

2 Jo Nova has estimated that the amount spent by government agencies, left-leaning charitable foundations and big business promoting “global warming” is approximately 3,500 times more than the amount spent funding climate change scepticism.

3. With notable exceptions such as Fox news, US conservative talk radio, the generally right-leaning blogosphere and one or two papers such as Canada’s National Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Daily Express (and increasingly, the Mail) there are few media outlets in the world which broadcast anything other than green propaganda. Far from being evil, the likes of Beck and Limbaugh are islands of truth in a (presumably doomed, increasingly acidified) ocean of lies. (I’d be interested if Matthews could produce some concrete examples of these “lies” that Limbaugh and Beck have told on climate change).

4. Would that be “science” in the sense used by Al Gore, as in the received wisdom of a self-selecting cabal of post-normal activist scientists who dominate organisations like the IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society. If so, then the Republican party is indeed “anti-science” because - with notable exceptions such as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, of whom more in a subsequent post, very likely to be entitled “Mitt Romney prefers dog poop yogurt” - bases its scientific views on old fashioned virtues like rationalism, empiricism and open-minded, honest research rather than junk science dogma.

If we’re talking about science in the more old fashioned sense of the word as it might have been understood by, say Newton or Popper, rather than James Hansen or Al Gore, then no, the Republicans are not “anti-science.”