If you frequent some of the web sites I do, including some of the ones I link to often, like the Dot Earth blog at the NY Times, or Green Car Congress, then you’ve surely seen the way the climate chaos deniers tend to swarm into the comments section of some postings and repeat the same tired talking points that have nothing to do with anything. If it weren’t such an important issue this would be humorous, in “point and laugh at the pathetic ninny” sort of way.

A much more serious practice is when well-financed deniers misrepresent science. A stunning example of this is highlighted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in Natural forces stalling global warming, UWM pair say (emphasis added):

Two researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee say natural forces in the Earth’s climate have conspired to end a recent period of global warming, and they predict that temperatures will change little or drop over the next decade or more.

The findings of mathematicians Kyle L. Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis contradict the assumptions of many climate scientists - including a leading figure who spoke in Milwaukee on Wednesday - who say the planet is currently warming.

Swanson and Tsonis believe that burning fossil fuels will lead to higher global temperatures over the century.

But their conclusion of lower temperatures in the near term has been used by anti-global warming forces to argue that the consensus on climate change isn’t clear cut.

The UWM work was published in late February in Geophysical Research Letters and first reported in early March in Discovery News.

A Baltimore Sun columnist then picked it up, and using other examples, he questioned why a report on the possible cooling of the Earth isn’t getting the same kind of attention as those who say the planet is warming.

Then, Tsonis said, “it became huge on the blogs” and became popular e-mail fodder.

Former TV meteorologist Rep. Jim Ott (R-Mequon) mentioned the UWM study on March 17 in his new e-newsletter called “The Hot Air Report,” which contends that there is significant disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is occurring and humans are playing a role.

Also, a spokesman for the libertarian Cato Institute said the organization is using the work of Swanson and Tsonis to buttress claims in an upcoming advertisement that says scientific debate over global warming is not settled.

The ad will run in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, spokesman Chris Kennedy said.

But Tsonis said that his and Swanson’s research has been misinterpreted and shouldn’t be used to throw cold water on policies aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

…

James Hansen, a climate scientist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, said during an appearance in Milwaukee on Wednesday that he agreed that natural factors play a role in the climate.

But they are dwarfed by the impact of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

Natural variations linked to sun spots and volcano eruptions can create short-term cooling factors, but these are not significant enough to counter the long-term trend of higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, said Hansen, the featured speaker at the Renewable Energy Summit.

“I’ll bet 10 dollars to a doughnut, with a very high degree of confidence, that decade by decade it’s going to be warmer - not that each decade is going to be warmer by the same amount,” Hansen said.

Last year was the coldest year in this decade. Global warming skeptics have used a chilly 2008 as evidence that the climate crisis has been overstated.

But NASA research shows that 2008 was the ninth-warmest year since 1880. Hansen said the cooling witnessed last year is linked to a La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which is now receding and shifting into a period of a warmer El Niño weather pattern.

I honestly don’t know how the people resorting to this level of coordinated and premeditated misrepresentation live with themselves.

And just to be clear, the people who say that global warming is real are the “anti-global warming forces”; the people who deny it exists aren’t anti-global warming, they’re anti-something else. Science? Truth? Integrity? Humanity? Take your pick.



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