Often, news articles miss the point or become political rather than informative. This one is unique. It’s got an odd mix of misunderstanding of the facts combined with compliments to McIntyre. Again, climatology is an odd world and some of this requires translation for the public (which doesn’t spend hours a day looking at it) to follow.

CA has the article under Hometown Coverage.

The full article by Jeet Heer is here.

It starts with this paragraph.

Much remains murky about the scandal dubbed Climategate, which involves the release last fall of e-mails leaked or stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Initial accounts focused on e-mails that seemed to show scientists deliberately distorting research to make the danger of global warming appear worse than it is. Others have suggested this could be a misreading of the e-mails, most of which, though not all, simply suggest working professionals wrangling over contentious issues and occasionally slagging their critics.

Now I understand that a reporter will attempt to maintain balance, but how come reasonable and neutral people keep repeating the bullcrap lines of these scientists. Others have suggested a misreading— come on. Read them yourself if you’re going to write an article. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out who’s being honest and who’s got the financial incentives not to. Gee, is it the unpaid bloggers or the multi-billion dollar climate industry?? Work the math. Anyway, it drives me nuts that people with keyboards are still pushing the obviously charade arguments.

Michael Mann said this:

“I think the climate-change-denial movement has recognized that transition was taking place and has really invested a lot of effort and resources in creating this huge infrastructure of online disinformation. And I think it is a challenge for legitimate news organizations to compete with that massive disinformation network.”

He’s taking too much airspace at my blog but the jerk is the central source of disinformation. If the ‘denial’ movement is out there and organized, please contact me at the email on the left cause I WANT SOME MONEY TOO!! It’s not a lie though because the dolt has convinced me that he actually believes his own bs.

As one of the signature issues of his blog, Mr. Watts has focused on meteorological stations, arguing that they were often misplaced – positioned in areas where temperatures were artificially high, such as asphalt parking lots. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responded to this critique by calculating temperatures minus Mr. Watts’s list of objectionable stations. Ironically, the new data showed a slight rise in temperatures.

I don’t know why a slight temperature rise is ‘ironic’ but this is the kind of comment that gives the drive by’s a bad name. No thought or understanding whatsoever. But then Michael Mann comes back with this crap:

“What McIntyre has essentially done is put his finger on small technicalities that don’t matter,” argues Prof. Mann, now based at Pennsylvania State University. “In every case, they’ve been dismissed. When the question arises, does it make a difference? The answer is always no. All that is important to him is to be able to say that he’s found a problem and then allow everybody else to say this fundamentally undermines the science.”

Why isn’t it important that the HS uses bad math? Why isn’t it important that data is used upside down? Why isn’t the media mentally capable of calling out these people when they are sold lines of bull.

The key objection to the work of bloggers such as Mr. McIntyre is that they are engaged in an epic game of nitpicking: zeroing in on minor technical issues while ignoring the massive and converging lines of evidence that are coming in from many disciplines. To read their online work is to enter a dank, claustrophobic universe where obsessive personalities talk endlessly about small building blocks – Yamal Peninsula trees, bristlecones, weather stations – the removal of which will somehow topple the entire edifice of climate science. Lost in the blogging world is any sense of proportion, or the idea that science is built on cumulative work in many fields, the scientists say.

And that is the comment that spurred the post. While beautiful in drama, it has a combination of ignorance and sophistry which can only be compared to the smell of old meat on a hot summer day. Nobody expects the entire edifice of climate science to fall just because much of it is comprised of scat. Dried old scat is strong enough to make houses of. Just what is this guy trying to paint skeptics as when he writes this? However, we do expect that reasoned people will re-evaluate the extremist claims of climate science, as well as the absolute witchcraft of the paleoclimate branch.

I’m published in other fields, I’ve got several patents, we’ve made products which lead the world in several categories, just what the hell makes us so much less than these paid global warming advocates? What does Michael Mann do that leads the wold in anything? — not one damn thing!

So let me reply to this last little sentence — “Lost in the blogging world is any sense of proportion, or the idea that science is built on cumulative work in many fields, the scientists say.”

Lost in the media world is any sense of understanding, or any ability to critically or objectively reason about an argument which goes against their political cause. Lost is the understanding which would make a good reporter figure out that you simply cannot throw away over half your data to make a conclusion. And finally, lost is the human race which is too damned stupid and lazy to see the scam right in front of their faces.

Finally, I need to address Shmidt who said this:

“He could be a scientific superstar,” Mr. Schmidt says. “He’s a smart person. He could be adding to the sum total of human knowledge, but in effect he adds to the reduction of the sum total of human knowledge.”

Think of the hubris of this statement. McIntyre could be a superstar because he’s so smart. A giant!! Yet, he contributes to a reduction of human knowledge. Where does this place Gavin in relationship to McIntyre on the scale of supergenius.

I’ve seen gavin’s work on frequency analysis of solar data. He, a PhD mathematician screwed the analysis so badly that I an Aeronautical engineer could have corrected it for him in moments. I’m not bragging, I’m pointing out that this self appointed genius has screwed up math in publication that even I can figure out.

I know already that it’s sophistry. I already know that Climate Audit is correct on the math issues, because I understand it. I know the Antarctic ain’t melting, Mann 08 and 09 are lies and a dozen other proxies and papers are rubbish. All because of McIntyre. Not because Steve said so, because I understand it.

What an idiot! – Hermione Granger – Sorcerers Stone

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