Ever desperate to attack climate science—but running out of even vaguely scientific issues to discuss—John Steele Gordon at the Wall Street Journal provides an uninformative tour of science history that concludes with two paragraphs on Climategate (so you know he's got absolutely nothing to say).
Taking issue with the phrase "the science is settled" and the term "climate-change deniers," Gordon attempts to show that science can't be trusted, citing Newton's mistaken understanding of Mercury's orbit as an example. Gordon then makes a false comparison to climate change saying that, as was 'clearly' the case with Newton, there are lots of unanswered questions about the climate. According to Gordon, this means any certainty about climate change must be a hoax perpetrated by self-interested politicians "to vastly increase government control over the economy and the personal lives of citizens."
If that doesn't make sense, don't worry, it's not just you. Gordon's non sequitur leap from Newtonian physics to climate change doesn't make much sense to us either. Nevertheless, Gordon moves on, proceeding to ask some of the "veritable cornucopia of unanswered questions" about climate change.
SAT prep cliches aside (seriously, "veritable cornucopia"?), Gordon's questions aren't exactly unanswered. He asks about a 20 year pause (supposedly from '78 to '98) that's explained by "natural variability." He asks about climate sensitivity, which has hovered around 2°C since first calculated by Arrhenius over a century ago. He asks about feedback mechanisms, which he could've just looked up on Wiki. Finally, he asks why in the past, high carbon dioxide levels saw temperatures both above and below the average.
Perhaps Gordon should crack that SAT prep book back open to figure out exactly what it means to take an "average."
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