Another embarrassment for Woody

Poor Woody over at GM’s Corner has gone and done it again: He’s embarrassed himself in public with his abject ignorance of the facts. This time he is pimping an opinion piece by Richard Lindzen, a global warming skeptic.

The problem is that Lindzen’s article has already been taken apart — for instance, by Judd Legum at ThinkProgress. (Hat tip to Deltoid.)

Here is Lindzen’s only substantive response:

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy [sic — Naomi] Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words “global climate change” produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

Peiser’s work – and Lindzen’s reliance on it — is an embarrassment. Here’s why:

1. Peizer misunderstands the point of Oreskes study. The point was not that every article about climate change explicitly endorsed the IPCC conclusions. The point is that if there was real uncertainty there would be "substantive disagreement in the scientific community" that would be reflected in peer reviewed literature. There wasn’t.

2. Peiser didn’t find any peer reviewed studies that oppose the scientific consensus. Peiser claimed that 34 papers “reject or doubt” the consensus view. Tim Lambert got Peiser to send him the abstracts of those 34 papers. The vast majority of these papers express no doubt whatsoever about the consensus view. Only one paper, by the Association of Petroleum Geologists, cited by Peiser actually rejects the consensus view and it "does not appear to have been peer reviewed outside that Association."

Peiser has admitted that his work included errors.

Woody’s been caught relying on a claim that has already been proven incorrect. Furthermore, said claim is based on a study whose author has already admitted mistakes. Dear me, how embarrassing.

Let us also note that Lindzen dismissively mentions the report entitled Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions in his piece. He doesn’t bother to mention that he was one of the authors of that report, which states:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century… The committee generally agrees with the assessment of human-caused climate change presented in the IPCC Working Group I (WGI) scientific report…

And what does the IPCC Working Group I (WGI) report have to say?

The increase in the number of studies, the breadth of techniques, increased rigour in the assessment of the role of anthropogenic forcing in climate, the robustness of results to the assumptions made using those techniques, and consistency of results lead to increased confidence in these results. Moreover, to be consistent with the signal observed to date, the rate of anthropogenic warming is likely to lie in the range 0.1 to 0.2°C/decade over the first half of the 21st century under the IS92a (IPCC, 1992) emission scenario.

So the very person Woody cites has already authored a report stating that anthropogenic (human-caused) warming of the global climate will continue. Get the smelling salts! I think Woody is going to faint from the embarrassment!

And the final embarrassment? Well, Woody makes a big deal about emulating the fictional TV detective Columbo, who was famous for tripping up perpetrators by asking “just one more thing”. Woody is so busy being clever that he forgets to ask a single question. Maybe he’s afraid that he’ll be embarrassed when someone answers.

But it is fitting that Woody pretends to a Columbo-like mental acuity. Columbo was, as already mentioned, a fiction — and so is Woody’s ability to debate.

How very embarrassing for him.

UPDATE 07/04/06 06:21 AM: Woody claims in his post that “Global warming ‘enthusiasts’ just hate to answer questions and want those who ask them to just go away” and that “the left is afraid to engage in [debate]”. I decided to find out what happens when Woody is asked a direct question.

I asked Woody a very simple question:

Who co-authored the report that made the following statements, Woody?

“Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability. Human-induced warming and associated sea level rises are expected to continue through the 21st century… The committee generally agrees with the assessment of human-caused climate change presented in the IPCC Working Group I (WGI) scientific report…“

You can see the question on this mirror of Woody’s post. Why do you have to use the mirror I captured? Because our brave debater deleted the question soon after it appeared. Woody hasn’t the courage to actually debate his claims, and I would like to thank him publicly for his cooperation in providing the proof.

It has been my experience that the wingers who screech the loudest the “the left is afraid to engage in [debate]” (as Woody does) are the ones who are themselves terrified of being asked questions about their arguments. Woody has again proven that when it comes to debate, he knows only how to cut and run.