Climate Scientists Won’t be Signing with a Label Anytime Soon

posted at 5:11 pm on May 18, 2011 by J.E. Dyer
[ Enviro-nitwits ]   

It had to happen.  Climate scientists in Australia, frustrated with the recalcitrance of an increasingly skeptical public, have perpetrated a rap video.  In it, they make the point that they are climate scientists.  That is the burden of their thesis:  they are climate scientists.  There’s a little business in the beginning about ice chunking off into the ocean, but the point they labor to make with this video is that they are climate scientists.

Interestingly, although I’m sure their credentials can be checked, the video does the opposite of reassure me about them.

Meanwhile, USA Today caused a burble in the blogosphere this week by comparing climate-change skeptics to Birthers.

Over at Slate, Brian Merchant last week revived blogosphere interest in a piece that appeared at FrumForum back in April, in which D.R. Tucker – who apparently had had no clear idea of why he was skeptical about anthropogenic global warming/climate change (AGW/CC) – announced that he had changed his mind, on reading the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.

If you read through his piece, you realize that he genuinely seems to have had no idea whatsoever why he was once an AGW/CC skeptic.  He appears unfamiliar with any of the main features of the debate, and unaware of the persuasive counter-evidence about literally everything he refers to in his discussion, ticking off point after point as if there has been no challenge to the IPCC data or the conclusions of AGW/CC believers.

Fortunately, AGW/CC believer James Hansen of NASA, along with three colleagues, published a new study this month concluding that climate models have consistently overestimated net man-made effects on climate.  Sarcasm has ensued.  The IPCC, meanwhile, in the wake of the revelations about erroneous or undocumented claims in its Fourth Assessment Report, has decided to implement reforms designed to prevent such problems in the future.

So it’s all good.  The AGW/CC debate continues.  And now, we know who the climate scientists are.

J.E. Dyer’s articles have appeared at The Green Room, Commentary’s “contentions,” Patheos, The Weekly Standard online, and her own blog, The Optimistic Conservative.

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