The Denialist Meltdown

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has alerted the media that its collection of “experts” is ready and willing to respond to the upcoming IPCC report. As DeSmogBlog notes, there are four of them: Myron Ebell, Iain Murray, Mario Lewis, and Chris Horner. Needless to say, these men have absolutely no background in climate science.

As I’ve mentioned before, Murray may well be the dimmest of the professional denialists. His latest CEI post is par for the course:

So the IPCC report that’s going to be released on Friday isn’t gloomy enough, eh? It will find less projected temperature rise and less predicted sea level rise than it did in 2001.

The story to which Murray links explains why this is:

The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don‘t know how to predict its effects in their computer models.

Yep, that certainly is a crushing blow to the climate alarmists!

Over at the Corner, Murray explains his theory in a bit more detail:

Our best information has it that the IPCC calculates that 0.8 degrees centigrade has already occured.

Subtracting that 0.8 from the projected temperature rises in the Fourth Assessment Report gives us a projected temperature rise this century of just 1.2 to 3.7 degrees centigrade. It also lowers the "best guess" for temperature rise to 2.2 degrees centigrade. This compares to the Third Assessment Report range of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees for 1990 to 2100.

There are several problems with this, but let’s focus on the obvious one, which is that Murray cites a single temperature (in centigrade, no less!) as the “best guess,” while the IPCC gives a range:

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2 - 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.

However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2 - 7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5 - 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

These charts from a BBC article, which compare IPCC-predicted changes to observed changes, should help interested readers to understand what a ludicrous fucking buffoon Murray really is:


Meanwhile, the AEI is offering payments of $10,000 to scientists and economists who’ll attack the IPCC report (purely in the interests of sound science, you understand):

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

I’m guessing they’ll have more luck with the economists than the scientists. Either way, though, Ben Greenberg of Greenpeace sums up the AEI nicely:

They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash.

Debra J. Saunders leans down from her dingy furnished room in Palookaville long enough to stick up for fellow dunce Frosty Hardison. She claims that there’s a conspiracy to pretend that dissenting scientists don’t exist, instead of clear evidence that the vast majority of them are either cranks or shills:

Global warming believers heap scorn on religious zealots for not valuing science and knowledge. Yet the thrust of their argument to prove apocalyptic global warming relies on denying the existence of views and scientists who clearly exist.

Predictably, Saunders trots out petrodollar whores Fred Singer and Richard Lindzen. For variety’s sake, she also invokes the “60 Canadian scientists” who signed a letter stating that there’s a consensus on climate change. Unfortunately, as David Roberts points out:

The letter was a vapid collection of myths; among those 60 scientists were long-time skeptics, known liars, and at least one guy who was tricked into signing. A few weeks later, 90 scientists -- who unlike the original 60 were Canadian and active in climate research -- wrote a letter of their own, denouncing the first.

In other news, Naomi Oreskes has written a fascinating article about the long consensus on climate change, which I can’t recommend highly enough.

UPDATE: A commenter was deeply distressed by my use of the term "petrodollar whore" in reference to Richard Lindzen, on the grounds that it's been ten years or so since Lindzen had gotten any payouts from the oil industry. No proof of this was offered, mind you, but I'm happy to assume the claim is accurate regardless. Why wouldn't it be?

I toyed with the idea of rewriting the line to read "former petrodollar whores," but worried that this might not be accurate in re Fred Singer. Accordingly, I decided to strike out the offending phrase. This allows readers to reject or accept the term (and its relevance) as they see fit, which was of course impossible previously.