The Cognitive Dissonance, It Burns

Science just dismantled a favorite climate change denialist talking point.

Over the last couple of years, the conservative movement, which loves science, has had a completely scientific-based reason for skepticism about climate change. The Earth’s temperature seemed to be rising at a slower rate than scientists had predicted. The global warming “pause,” as it was inaccurately called — it was actually “getting warmer at a slower-than-expected rate,” rather than an actual pause — served as grist for a massive flow of coverage expressing skepticism about scientific models and climate change. …

… The importance of the global-warming pause, conservatives explained, was that we needed to get the science right. “One lesson of the IPCC report is that now is the time for policy caution. Let’s see if the nonwarming trend continues, in which case the climate models will need remodeling,” explained the Journal’s editors.

But fortunately we now have an answer. A new paper released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds that the apparent slowdown in warming was an artifact of mis-measurement. The Earth is not warming at a slower rate. It’s warming at the same fast pace as it did the previous decade. …

Not really a surprise, considering the last few summers have broken heat records.

Conservatives placed so much weight on the apparent existence of this pause that there’s no way they would just immediately switch over to some other justification for their same skepticism, like some kind of reflexive ideologues.

Ahem. And how does the Right respond to getting the science right?

NOAA Fiddles With Climate Data To Erase The 15-Year Global Warming ‘Hiatus’

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists have found a solution to the 15-year “pause” in global warming: They “adjusted” the hiatus in warming out of the temperature record.

To avoid dealing with the actual science, the Daily Caller went to the go-to science denial team of Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts, who have been occupying the apparently lucrative niche of pretending to be experts on earth temperature and writing a lot of pseudo-scientific papers denying climate change. Tisdale is a man with no known scientific background who calls  himself an ““independent climate researcher.” Watts is a former broadcast weatherman who doesn’t have a college degree, although he did take some undergraduate meteorology classes, which puts him ahead of Tisdale.

A sampling of rightie blogs reveals that this is the story they’re going with — evil scientists “fiddled” with the data. Can’t trust those scientists with, you know, science. Anyway, here’s an article in the Washington Post that, in brief, explains that the old data showing a “hiatus” was flawed mostly because of issues with data reporting.

Update: Some pretentious whackjob calling himself Christopher Monckton of Brenchley today published a “report” saying there has been no global warming at all since December 1966. And he has charts to prove it! And rightie bloggers are quoting him as an expert! Lord Monckton is a certifiable looney tune. According to Sourcewatch,

Monckton has made various false claims in the past such as that he is a member of the British House of Lords.[2], a Nobel Prize winner, inventor of a cure for HIV, winner of a defamation case against George Monbiot and writer of a peer-reviewed article. He was deputy leader of the far right United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP) before being sacked from the party in 2013.

It appears that “he has TWICE been asked by Republicans to testify about climate change before committees of the U.S. Congress,” according to this blogger.