The article in the Hawaii Reporter by William J. McLaughlin on Nov. 15, 2006 was more than a little shallow (http://tinyurl.com/ybff3r). The Title was “Hack Scientists Can Do Real Damage” and was referring to “hacks” who are skeptical about a number of government driven policies, including the wildly exaggerated global warming scare. The word "hack” used at least 9 times in the article, was not only defamatory, it contributed nothing to the scientific debate.

McLaughlin begins with the statement “Throughout recent American history, whenever scientific evidence has provided a clear case for dealing aggressively with threats to public health or the environment, hacks have stood in the way of progress by deliberately distorting scientific findings.” I disagreed with his simplistic assessment. I and many others have written about the reverse situation, namely, that of government failures and arrogance. (http://tinyurl.com/y7k9t6).

In too many cases it has been a minority or even an individual who has been historically right in such debates. The trials of Galileo, the torture and burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno, the scorn and professional destruction of Ignaz Semmelweis (http://tinyurl.com/yys9kl), and more recently the 9000 pages of testimony from 150 scientists, most of whom opposed the tragic and misguided DDT ban by Environmental Protection Agency in 1972.

All of these and many more point to government arrogance, all point to government junkscience, all point to government crushing of any opposing point of view. And we can imagine there were many early versions of Mr. McLaughlin tagging along offering me-tooisms in support of the prevailing dictators. Such people would join in the fun of insults, recrimination, burning at the stake, and cheering at public hangings. More recently Nuremberg-type Trials have been suggested for skeptics (http://tinyurl.com/uykvu), although burning at the stake has not surfaced yet. Such insults and abuses are all too familiar in the debating skills, such as they are, among the global warmers. Making their case scientifically continues to escape them.

It is instructive that Mr. McLaughlin offered not a single data point to sustain his views, not a single temperature datum nor a single temperature trend chart, not a single bit of evidence of sea level changes. Nor did he provide a single reference and or a single link to any supporting data.

We did read a lot about hand waving and about changes in the environment, but these have been going on for millions of years. So have changes in the climate, but these often are not due to any temperature changes, a crucially important distinction nowadays.

Where are the T data? He did raise one point about an early heavy snow fall this year in New England not being an indication that global warming was over. He is correct in this. However, if it had been instead an unseasonable heat wave in New England “the heavens themselves would have blazed forth” as Shakespeare might have said, and insisted that the heat wave was evidence of global warming. This would not be true either, no matter how many hundreds of times the media would have announced otherwise. As such the early snowstorm was in fact bad news for the PR wing of the global warmers. They went silent for a week or so.

Atlantic Conveyor

The data continue to pour in which do not support man-made global warming. That famous Atlantic Conveyor, the ocean sized current of sea water which keep the British Isles moderate, and doom Europe to all sorts of climatic disasters, isn’t a threat any more. New data are showing that it will continue into the future as it has in the past (http://tinyurl.com/y9bf4w). The science writer wrote in Science, Nov. 17, 2006 that “There’s no sign that the ocean’s heat-laden ‘conveyor’ is slowing.”

Antarctic Temperature

The Antarctic continues to show a slight cooling since satellite data collection began in 1979 (http://tinyurl.com/yehlzy). Antarctic surface temperatures as measured at the South Pole at the Amundsen Base have been declining since 1957. (http://tinyurl.com/y6cyso).

Antarctic Ice Mass is Increasing

As reported in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society the Antarctic ice mass is increasing. (http://tinyurl.com/ymcq6d). This is completely consistent with the cooling trend shown in much of the Antarctic temperature data. Contrary to all the horror stories one hears about global warming-induced mass wastage of the Antarctic ice sheet leading to rising sea levels that gobble up coastal lowlands worldwide, the most recent decade of pertinent real-world data suggest that forces leading to just the opposite effect are apparently prevailing, even in the face of what climate alarmists typically describe as the greatest warming of the world in the past two millennia or more.

Update of Greenland Temperature Data Base

A new Danish/CRU collaborative study (Extending Greenland Temperature Records into the late 18th Century (http://tinyurl.com/yedake) shows that since the year 1784, the warmest year in Greenland was 1941, and the warmest decades were the 30s and 40s. It has cooled slightly since then. (http://tinyurl.com/yedake). As has been said repeatedly most of the warming since the depths of the Little Ice Age (1700s) took place before the 1940s, well before CO2 was any problem, real or imagined. This study is yet another affirmation of that.

The references above have appeared in the peer reviewed scientific literature during last week or two. There are many more references to be cited which do not support the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. Mr. McLaughlin’s problems are not limited to name-calling. He is also obligated to show why these hundreds of peer reviewed article are all wrong. Name calling won’t change these “inconvenient truths”, to coin a phrase.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has written a 120 page analysis of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. It contains 302 references with many links to the original scientific literature. It is divided into 5 sections: 1. one-sided, 2. misleading; 3. exaggerated; 4. speculative; 5. and wrong. A lesser film promoter than Gore would be embarrassed into anonymity.

There is much much more which the global warmers ignore, misrepresent, or dismiss. Honest scientists historically have welcomed criticism to help make hypotheses more robust, more defensible. Even Albert Einstein was so unpretentious as to propose experiments to prove or disprove his theory of relativity. Such candor and unpretentiousness is at this point completely unknown among the global warming crowd. Being caught so many times misrepresenting the many climate issues and ignoring the findings which do not support them, does little to enhance their dwindling credibility.