Phil Plait, the know it all defender of the faithful at Bad Astronomy is getting a bashing at www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/2/1/awful-astronomer-astray.html and at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/01/briggs-schools-the-bad-astronomer-… and of course at http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5138. As one of Leroy's most popular sources of anti-EU material we at SIS may take some pleasure from the roasting – a case of receiving back a bit of what he has been dishing out over the years, all in the name of supporting various consensus ideas and ridiculing anything out of line with orthodox paradigms. Ah, sweet February, you are divine.
The spat began with 16 scientists writing a piece for the Wall Street Journal that said global warming was a lot of heat about very little heat – there was not enough warming to get excited over. The response by the CAGW true belief system was so rabid the newspaper had to print another piece disagreeing with those scientists just to stop the brickbats while CAGW defenders of the 'faith' were everywhere in large numbers doshing the PR and producing graphs to contradict said scientists. Into the melee came the Bad Astronomer, in an attempt to corral the cattle (Joe Public) and appears to have got caught out by somebody just a tad too clever for him. The smoke and mirrors approach of the Bad Astronomer (and where have we seen that before?) was blown sky high. Meanwhile. over at www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4868-the-mail-on-sunday-the-met-office-a… we have David Whitehouse explaining in detail what the problem is when you get down to the basics. The last 5 years have been cooler than the previous 5 years and most of the warming is located between 1996-2000 and we are at the moment on the cusp of a plateau. It might go up and it might come down. Meanwhile, the Arctic is very cold and sea ice is thicker than it has been for some years – what do you think might happen? Phil Plait might pretend this is not happening and the CAGW brigade are not above fiddling with the statistics but the facts are the facts – are they getting desperate?