When it comes to global warming, newspapers play up stories that reinforce the prevalent the-sky-is-falling belief that global warming is human-caused and catastrophic. But if a study or scientist does not portend the end of the world as we know it, it rarely rates as news.
In that spirit, many papers (including The Chronicle) have reported on a UC San Diego science historian who reviewed 928 abstracts of peer-reviewed articles on global warming ...
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Posted by Fabrice Florin
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I returned to this article about 24 hours after I first read it to take a closer look. This is a re-review: In her critique of the global warming orthodoxy, Debra Saunders connects some embarrassing inconsistencies and glitches in evidence that is used to support climate change theory. Beyond that, this piece falls short of providing a convincing case for global warming skeptics. To point out a few of her own inconsistencies: She quotes David Bellamy as saying in every year since the mid-90s world temperatures have gotten colder. Really? IPCC statistics indicate otherwise. Regardless, annual temperatures are less significant when you look at climate trends. Pan out to the beginning of industrial revolution and the trend is unmistakably upward. Looking only from 1998 onward, of course the data is going to be less conclusive. She also questions the uniformity of climate studies conducted between 1993 and 2003, but on what grounds if not her own failure to accept a broad consensus? Are we expected to believe that scientists cooked a decade's worth of climate data? Finally, Marc Morano -- please. Was there really no one more qualified and relevant than the communications director for the Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee? Who are these woodwork dwellers he mentions and what are their credentials?
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I agree that we need to allow more leeway for the dissenting side of the global warming debate. But that should not mean bending over backwards to give junk science center-stage.