Iain Dale loses the plot on climate change.

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The Blogfather's position on climate change has certainly evolved over the years. 

In 2006 he was pointing out that urgent action was required, just that the Chinese would have to make it. 

By 2007 he was linking to Exxon-funded propaganda with the immortal slogan "They call it carbon dioxide. We call it life", but without explicitly endorsing them. Later that year he was calling for balance - check out the first excellent comment to that piece.

Balance is a nice idea. If someone suggested you take a balanced position between the scientific consensus on one hand and the wingnuttery adopted by UKIP's Christopher Monckton, I'd recommend telling them to get stuffed.

Last year he was tired of the science being rammed down his throat, and it's true, the truth can be inconvenient.

His latest post is truly spectacular, though. Seriously, would you use this graph from the Daily Mail to prove temperatures aren't changing? That looks like a fairly clear trend to me.

dalemailfail.jpg
And yes, the title contains a subtle joke just for Jeff.

3 Comments

Haha, much appreciated James.

Needless to say, I'm siding with your good self on this one.

If you ask me though, Iain deserves some credit, there's clearly been some hard graph-t going on there... (I do try)

As I explained on B21 the key point on the green line is where it starts - 1400. I'm surprised it goes back that far. How many trees do we have today over 2-300 years old? In the overal scheme tree ring data is insignificant. That the Mail/Dale buffons wish to make it so is a sign of their desperation.

The point with tree rings is that in some cases it's possible to establish clear overlaps in the records from different old trees (buried, used in construction etc), and so establish a historical record longer than a single tree.

That's the Yamal issue so aggravating the sceptics right now. Another thing they can't or won't understand, inevitably.

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