The Global Warming Debate Is Over

Not.

"The 'hockey stick' picture of dramatic temperature rise in the past 100 years following 1,700 years of relatively constant temperature has now been proven false," says David Legates, Delaware state climatologist. (source)

The "hockey stick" is, of course, the fundamental DNA of the global warming argument. Unless you can prove, as the graph proports to, that recent temperature rises are exceptional and unprecedented, all we have is a normal cycle of global temperature flux, and we humans are kicked off the field to watch from the sidelines.

The quote above is from a post on the Daily Policy Digest of the National Center for Policy Analysis, which also states:

Experts testifying before a Congressional subcommittee said a graph used by some environmentalists to illustrate "unprecedented global warming in the twentieth century" is fraudulent. ...

Because the hockey stick image has been regularly used to promote and justify proposed climate change legislation, Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to examine the controversy. The NAS report confirmed criticisms leveled against the hockey stick:

• Whereas the authors of the research that produced the hockey stick concluded "the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium," the NAS found little confidence could be placed in those claims.
• In addition, the NAS found the original researchers used proxy data for past temperature reconstructions that were unreliable; that the historic climate reconstruction failed important tests for verifiability; and that the methods used underestimated the amount of uncertainty in the conclusions it reached.

The main conclusion of the hockey stick study:

• Based on the evidence cited and methodology used by the hockey stick researchers, the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming "cannot be supported."
• The close ties between scientists in the small paleoclimatology community prevented true peer review of the hockey stick and related analyses. [See also: "Incestuous Amplification."]
  

I'd keep this going, but Al Gore says the debate over global warming is over. Sigh.

Related Tags: Global warming, Hockey stick, Environmentalism, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth