Climate Science Is Right

The main news from the final of the slew of inquiries into the hacking of some climate scientist's email (the CRU or Climate Research Unit) is that apart from a few minor areas, they were honest and accurate in thier work. Put simply - climate science is right. Not that you'd know that from the right-wing media who are busy focusing on the minor points - but then they have to else it makes all the rubbish they wrote prior to this look like, well... rubbish.

Within the denailosphere, the predictable doddering ediface of conspiracy grows ever more absurd. Why? Because when a conspiracy thoery encountered information that disproves it, it must grow and absorb the counter-information into the conspiracy. Hence all the climate-creationsist conspiriacy does it grow more and more absurd by the day... Here's what one denialist had to say:

I guess the main question coming out of the Muir Russell report is: when is he going to be appointed to the House of Lords and his choice of appellation? Lord Muir of Holyrood? They adopted a unique inquiry process in which they interviewed only one side – CRU. As a result, the report is heavily weighted towards CRU apologia.

See how that works? The twisted logic is; Muir Russell does not agree with denail therefore Muir Russell must be in on the scam.

But lets ask another question - how do we know that the climate science is right? The report's authors did a very clever thing to test if they were right. What they did is got hold of some publically avalible temprature data (not from the CRU) and got hold of some publically avalible computer code to analysie it (not from the CRU) and ran the analysis. If the CRU were lying/wrong then the tempature reconstructions would look different to the results the CRU got. If the CRU were right, then the resonstructions would look the same as the CRU's results. What happened? The resonstructions looked the same as the CRU's results. Slam dunk. Here's how one commentor put it:

the report has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Inquiry had enough independent brains to reproduce the software code on the original information available in a short space of time.

Which in turn proves that all climate sceptics who complain about the code not being available are not particularly bright - at least when it comes to writing and/or understanding code.

Which in turn also makes me openly wonder whether climate sceptics bleating about unavailability of the code would even have the faintest idea what to do with it if it was served to them on a silver platter.

Give it up mate. You guys are really starting to look like a flock of headless chooks now.

Amen. And here's the kicker to the conspiracy theory - there are very powerful forces who would love nothing more than climate change to turn out to be a scam - the Republican Party, the oil, coal and gas industries, the right-wing media, Russia, Saudia Arabia (home to the largest reserves of oil) etc. If somebody could come out and show it's a hoax, from from being in danger - they'd be fetted by all of the above and more as heros. So why would sombody risk thier reputation to back a handful of climate scientists? Again, this comment sums it up...

After each inquiry we all have heard the same calls long and loud from the denialosphere: "Whitewash, whitewash ..." but it can be shown to hold no water with a simple explanation. I have a coin (20c)and i'll flip it. If it comes up heads then you can have the coin. If it comes up tails then you give me $100. Will you take that bet? No? Why? Because it is a dumb bet. Only an idiot would risk $100 to win 20c. This is the case with these inquiries. If it were truly a whitewash then I do not know anyone who would risk their reputation and the reputation of an institution to which they belong to rescue the reputation of another. If there was even a hint of impropriety, Mann, Jones and the CRU would have been hung out to dry and the members of these panels would have distanced themselves quicker than you can pass wind. When the currency of these researchers and institutions is reputation, if dodgy deeds were done no-one would risk their reputation to ressurect another's. Why? Because it is a dumb bet.