A recent column by Martin Hackworth, published in the Idaho State Journal:

We’ve recently been treated to a series of columns in the Idaho State Journal concerning the great global warming hoax. The hubbub has apparently been precipitated by the 2007 Academy Award received by the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" and the recent awarding of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work on increasing awareness of climate change.

Though I consider "An Inconvenient Truth" to be a political rather than a scientific work and I don’t agree with many of the film’s worst case scenarios, its overall conclusions concerning climate change are essentially correct. The fact that Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel is indicative of the fact that most of the world gets it even if pockets of ignorance remain in our own backyard.

If the stylings of anthropogenic global warming critics here are to be taken at face value they are apparently a cabal of the greatly confused. There are claims that global warming is real but not caused by humans, then counterclaims that global warming is an artifice due to errors in NASA statistics; that global warming is due to changes in the Sun, cosmic rays or other fuzzy natural processes, then that statistical errors in the “hockey stick” model show the warming trend isn’t real after all. We’ve been regaled with alleged data exposing anthropogenic global warming fraud from astrologers (“prominent heliologist,” Dr. Theodor Landscheidt), conservative commentators with no scientific credentials, and even an occasional scientist, like MIT physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen, whose other areas of expertise happen to be consulting for oil companies and denying the link between smoking and cancer.

Nonetheless it is worth the time to review some of the more brazen claims against anthropogenic global warming and a few of its principal spokespersons who have appeared in the ISJ recently. Here they are in order of increasing silliness.

Claim: increasing global temperatures are due to galactic cosmic rays. This is an intriguing theory. The idea is that cosmic rays, via mechanisms not totally understood, influence the formation of stratiform clouds that regulate temperature. This link has been demonstrated in laboratory cloud chambers but not in the atmosphere. The major problems with this theory are that the most optimistic estimate of the strength of this effect is several orders of magnitude less that that required to explain current trends and that no correlation exists between increasing temperatures and increasing galactic cosmic rays.
Claim: NASA scientists recently recompiled data to show that 1934 was the warmest year on record. NASA did find that they had overestimated the temperature data for 1998 by 0.06 degrees Fahrenheit thus stripping 1998 of its title as the hottest year on record in the U.S. and returning the honor to 1934, the year of the infamous dust bowl. This revelation caused an uproar in the conservative blogosphere where the claim morphed to 1934 being the warmest year on record everywhere. In fact the warmest modern years worldwide have all occurred since 1989. There is no argument about this among the informed and no confusion for anyone who can understand any of the easy to read data on NASA or NOAA Web sites.

Claim: Errors have been discovered in the “Hockey Stick” statistical model that shows the potential for dramatic future increases in global temperatures. This claim arises from a February 2005 article in Geophysical Research Letters by Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick claiming various errors in the methodology of Mann et al. ,1998; in the principal component analysis they used to generate the “Hockey Stick.” McIntyre and McKitrick first made this claim in 2003 in the social science journal Energy and Environment. The same paper was later unanimously rejected by the editors and reviewers of the journal Nature before being printed in Geophysical Research Letters at the urging of physicist and McArthur Fellow Dr. Richard Muller. In response to the 2005 article scores of scientists worldwide verified the statistical methods used by Mann in the generation of the “Hockey Stick” and no peer-reviewed claims doubting its veracity have arisen since.

Claim: NASA climatologist Dr. James Hansen received $720,000 from George Soros to spread the great global warming hoax. In spite of the fact that there is zero evidence for this and that Hansen has personally denied receiving any money from Soros this rumor is rampant on right wing blogs. I guess that once one embraces suspension of disbelief it gets easier with practice.

Claim: A British judge ruled that “An Inconvenient Truth” could not be shown in British schools. This is the silliest claim of all since it requires no knowledge of science to understand that it just isn’t true. Justice Michael Burton actually ruled that the film, while imperfect, was essentially correct on the trend in climate change and could be shown in schools in the U.K. as long as it was accompanied by materials pointing out factual errors.

The fact of the matter is that the anthropogenic global warming debate has left uninformed skeptics behind. Just like embracing Bigfoot, weather wars or 9/11 conspiracy theories, denying the reality of anthropogenic global warming doesn’t make one a maverick, just a kook.

-- Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a senior lecturer in physics at Idaho State University.

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Comments from the ISJ Politics Blog included: