Saints and heretics debate climate change scripture

As President Obama limps home from Copenhagen with the noncommittal commitments to kind of keep an eye on greenhouse gases but no treaty, the actual debate over global warming might be heating up in a positive way.

On Friday the Washington Post carried an article by the oracle of global warming and inventor of the 1999 hockey stick graphic, Michael Mann, explaining away the rhetoric, bluster and threats in those purloined e-mails from the University of East Anglia.

On the same day, The Wall Street Journal printed an op-ed by global warming doubter, not really denier, Patrick Michaels, of whom, in one of those aforementioned e-mails, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist remarked, “Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.”

Michaels explains how the acolytes of global warming have manipulated the “bible” of atmospheric science through intimidation and terminations.

Mann uses his newsprint space to explain away the “trick” and the “hide the decline” comments and debate Sarah Palin rather than real scientists.

Michaels notes that Mann and others did not much care for a paper he published in “Climate Research” in 2002 arguing the global warming dogma overstated the effects of carbon dioxide. In response, according to Michaels, Mann called on his colleagues to put “Climate Research” out of business.

"Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal," Mann wrote in one of the e-mails. Half the editorial board of “Climate Research” resigned.

Another editor at another publication, Yale’s James Saiers, also was soon gone, says Michaels.

“The result of all this is that our refered literature has been inestimably damaged, and reputations have been trashed,” concludes Michaels.

Meanwhile, Mann repeats the line about consensus, remarking, “The scientific consensus regarding human-caused climate change is based on decades of work by thousands of scientists around the world. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that the scientific case is clear.”

Must be scripture.