I have evidence? Do you?

I want to take the time here to examine an argument made by deniers of climate change. *cough* Rush Limbaugh *cough.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_112409/content/01125111.guest.html

First, let’s ignore the beginning of this transcript in which a conversation between Rush and a caller compares the hacking of the “climategate” e-mails to the revealing that the world is not flat. The absurdity speaks for itself. So, on to Rush’s ridiculous claim regarding climate change. Rush comes speeding out of the gate only to stumble over his own idiocy right away with this gem of a statement, “I've known this is all a hoax. I just haven't been able to scientifically prove it, of course.” When debating a scientific issue you immediately lose all credibility by saying that you have no scientific proof for your argument. Rush is relying on the misconception that these leaked e-mails point to a hoax an issue that I will address later on.

“The hockey stick graph showing temperature rises -- it's made up. It uses incomplete data”
Asides from insisting that the e-mails prove that this is all a hoax, the hockey stick graph appears to be the only argument that Rush can give us as to why climate change is untrue. Notwithstanding the fact that Rush has already failed with his foolish statement regarding his own lack of scientific evidence (By the way I’m sure he’s dedicated as much time as climate scientists have on researching the issue), the hockey stick graph argument is yet another fail.

Take this information from Real Climate:

“Myth: Evidence for modern human influence on climate rests entirely upon the "Hockey Stick" Reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures indicating anomalous late 20th century warmth.

This peculiar suggestion is sometimes found in op-ed pieces and other dubious propaganda, despite its transparent absurdity. Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth’s surface. Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called “Detection and Attribution Studies”. Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases).”

This is similar to the creationist argument of “show me the missing link” ignoring the fact that fossils aren’t the only evidence of evolution. He doesn’t make any claims as to why the hockey stick graph is false, making it impossible to actually argue against the claim. (We don’t know why he thinks it’s false). The only other evidence we have of what goes on inside Rush’s sad little brain is a mentioning of the tree ring scandal. I believe what Rush is referring to is this, “Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/).

Denialists are jumping on this e-mail as definitive proof that climate change is a hoax and there is a huge conspiracy involved. It’s amazing what a misunderstanding of scientific terms can do. As stated by Real Climate,

“The ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem... and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.” (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/)

So there you have it, Rush’s non-scientific proof to climate change is a hoax is the word “trick”. It’s too bad for him that in this case “trick” has a different meaning.