This week the Kyoto Protocol went into effect and Global Warmists worldwide celebrated that it happened and castigated the U.S. for not joining in. Today's Opinion Journal provides what may be the most convincing argument I've heard in support of the Global Warming theory.
American geoscientist Michael Mann published a chart that purported to show average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years. The chart showed relatively minor fluctuations in temperature over the first 900 years, then a sharp and continuous rise over the past century, giving it a hockey-stick shape...
Mr. Mann's chart was both a scientific and political sensation. It contradicted a body of scientific work suggesting a warm period early in the second millennium, followed by a "Little Ice Age" starting in the 14th century...
Yet there were doubts about Mr. Mann's methods and analysis from the start. In 1998, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics published a paper in the journal Climate Research, arguing that there really had been a Medieval warm period. The result: Messrs. Soon and Baliunas were treated as heretics and six editors at Climate Research were made to resign.
Pretty strong argument, wouldn't you say?
They have an agenda, both financial and personal (read: attention and fame), to gain by the advance of climate science. I'm still very much straddling the fence on this issue, but the more I read of opinion silencing among the CS community, the more skeptical I am of their motives.
Posted by: Scott | February 19, 2005 at 12:06 PM
Mann's results were discredited when a Monte Carlo analysis was done on his model. For those of you not familiar with Monte Carlo analysis, random data is thrown at a model or simulation to see if the results will show the randomness of the data. In Mr. Mann's case the random data set showed exactly the same results as his 'pure' data - the 'hockey stick' chart of the temperature change. That means that Mann's model was faulty, if not outright fraudulent.
Posted by: DCE | February 20, 2005 at 07:10 PM