Del Boy And His Fiery Trousers

[Update at end of post]

Showing his usual measured and mild-mannered approach to the subject of climate change, James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingpole has posted another missive in the bear pit that is Maily Telegraph blogland titled “Lying, cheating climate scientists caught lying, cheating again”, to the approval of his adoring echo chamber (Sid and Doris Bonkers).

Del Boy is still smarting from the appearance on the scene of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project – co-funded by one of the Koch foundations – and its preliminary conclusion that global warming is happening, and that the temperature information provided thus far by NASA GISS, the NOAA, and HAD CRUT is essentially correct.

So when BEST Scientific Director Richard Muller suggested that the warming trend had not slowed down, here was an opportunity for Del Boy to bring forward evidence to the contrary – and shout “liar” again, just to emphasise his rational approach and enhance his credentials. Sadly, though, he relies on Astroturf lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) for his information.

BEST: Axes allegedly skewed

The GWPF’s David Whitehouse presents a series of data covering the first decade of the current century and declares it to be “a statistically perfect straight line of zero gradient”, without any of the statistical analysis that would prove his claim. Whitehouse, while complaining that BEST has presented the X and Y axes on their graphs other than to his satisfaction, has in fact skewed the data himself.

GWPF: Perish the thought!

BEST – and all other major studies of recent temperature data – have showed a warming of around 0.7 Celsius in rather more than 30 years. The GWPF chart covers just ten years, and the gradient of that line is not flat. It’s upwards – though not, given the spacing of the X and Y axes, steeply so. I reckon – and am quite prepared to be corrected – the warming shown is around 0.25 Celsius.

Which fits in with figures for the decades prior to the Millennium. And, other than the misleading GWPF graph, and Whitehouse’s assertions, the only scrap of evidence that Del Boy brings to the table is Mail hack David Rose, whose selective attempts to rubbish climate science have been so thoroughly debunked in the past couple of years.

“Note how the 10 year trend from 2001 to 2010 ... shows no warming whatsoever” proclaims Delingpole, in yet another act of flagrant dishonesty. He then loudly accuses anyone and everyone not in agreement of Himself Personally Now to be dishonest. This convinces the echo chamber, which dutifully agrees, in the style of nodding donkeys.

No change there, then.

[UPDATE: the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines, who styles himself Guido Fawkes, has copied the graphs from David Rose's Mail On Sunday piece and talked up the BEST versus GWPF "argument" into a "case of fakery". He then suggests that "the global warming racket is unravelling". The sound of ritual incantation is thus pumped into the argument in order to keep it inflated.

What also does not help Staines and Delingpole is that Prof. Judith Curry, who they both quote in support of their stance, has today stated on her blog that "this does not constitute a new scientific scandal in any way". She also suggests that David Rose was leading in his questioning]