Today in climate astrology

A recent op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times caught my eye. Written by Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth, it appears to be yet another attempt by liberals to point out why conservatives won't buy into the AGW hoax.

Nyhan brings up both a recent Pew Research poll and a study by someone at Yale to show that it is people's religious belief that is stopping them from accepting the leftist position on climate change.

Nyhan burnishes his lefty cred by managing to conflate liberal hobby horses like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccinations with lack of belief in human caused climate change.

Wow.

And when he calls on "opinion leaders" to stop spreading mis-information, he naturally cites the "birther" meme put forth some years back. I'm guessing that wild, groundless accusations about conservatives aren't as troubling to the prof -- such as the "911 truther" meme.

But amidst his, you know the facts, your'e just letting your primitive religious belief get in the way op-ed, Nyhan accidentally shows exactly why there is intelligent resistance to the AGW hoax.

In the post's opening he says there is "...solid evidence that the temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades."

That is provably false. Period. And the data for that is out there for anyone with a computer to see. The fact is that there has been no global warming for over 17 years now. And that is despite an increase of 60ppm of atmospheric CO2. Which is to say that even the endless hullabaloo about CO2 as a "greenhouse gas" doesn't appear to have any merit either:

He also drops the lefty fav about "...97% of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming." This common falsehood is derived from the fatally flawed Cook et al., 2013. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024024 paper.

As I pointed out in a recent post, analysis of the paper shows that in actuality, 95% of the papers used to substantiate that claim are silent on the notion of human caused climate change.

And when you look at everything from Climategate to the desperate attempts by AGW adherents to silence debate on the subject (from the BBC refusing to allow dissent on air to web communities like Reddit banning dissenters) it is only natural to question the validity of supposed scientific truths that cannot be backed up by actual verifiable facts.

Frankly, the only people acting like religious zealots here are lefties like prof. Nyhan. It is he and his colleagues that are conducting witch hunts and attempting to destroy non-believers or bludgeon them into compliance. So in one way, perhaps his own thesis is right -- religious belief is getting in the way of otherwise intelligent people from agreeing with science.

It is just that it is Brendan Nyhan who is blinded by unsupportable doctrine, not us conservatives.