Warming and science denialists stuck with political egg on their predictions

If they are honorable people, they wish they could take it back.

John Hinderaker at Powerline, November 23, 2009:

At the end of 2008, the scientists at East Anglia predicted that 2009 would be one of the warmest years on record:

On December 30, climate scientists from the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia projected 2009 will be one of the top five warmest years on record. Average global temperatures for 2009 are predicted to be 0.4∞C above the 1961-1990 average of 14 ∫ C. A multiyear forecast using a Met Office climate model indicates a rapid return of global temperature to the long-term warming trend, with an increasing probability of record temperatures after 2009.

We know now that the alarmists’ prediction for 2009 didn’t come true. What’s interesting is that in January of this year, another climate alarmist named Mike MacCracken wrote to Phil Jones and another East Anglia climatologist, saying that their predicted warming may not occur . . .

Hinderaker quoting Anthony Watts’ chest thumping at Watts Up With That. In November, with cool weather in the local forecasts, they thought that 2009 would turn out to be a cold year, climate wise, and so they were demanding that climate scientists retract predictions and claims based on the data at hand.  Watts was averaging his thermometer readings before they thermometers had been read.

Oops.

Here’s what actually happened:

NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2010

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

From NASA: "This map shows the 10-year average (2000-2009) temperature anomaly relative to the 1951-1980 mean. The largest temperature increases are in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula. (Image credit: NASA/GISS)"

I’ve been hunting for retractions from Powerline and WUWT, but haven’t found them yet.  Has anyone else seen the retractions from these guys, for accuracy’s sake, for the record?  Hinderaker blogged the issue as recently as February 2, but mistook the continued warmness as a ‘lack of additional warming.’  Really.  Hinderaker’s consistency in error is profound, with six or more posts on the issue since November 23, and not one noting his glaring error, each one assuming his error does not exist.  It is a consistency striven for only by hobgoblins of no mind.

Hinderaker said in that November post:

Climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial. What climate scientists like those at East Anglia don’t know dwarfs what they do know. They can produce a model for every occasion, but are the models any good? If so, which one? One thing we know for sure is that they don’t generate reliable predictions. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming, however, there is no such thing as falsification. Which is the ultimate evidence that the alarmist scientists are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one.

Really?  Political commentary on climate science is in its infancy, and every proposition is controversial, even those that should not be. What ill-informed and sometimes ignorant, belligerent pundits  like those at Powerline and Watts Up don’t know dwarfs what they do know. They can’t produce a model for any occasion, but they will ask as if they had anything to add other than heckling, “are the models any good? If so, which one?” One thing we know for sure is that they don’t generate accuracy in reporting or trustworthy claims. In every scientific field other than global warming, a scientific hypothesis that generates false predictions is considered disproved. When it comes to global warming’s critics and outright denialists, however, there is no such thing as falsification. There is, so far,  no such thing as an honorable confession of error, either.  In political commentary, anyone who makes a prediction in late November that is exactly wrong when the numbers are tallied two months later, should have the grace to make a concession speech.  These ravings, and failure to strive for accuracy when error is apparent, provide ultimate evidence that the contrarians and denialists are not scientists, and are engaged in a political enterprise, not a scientific one.  Hinderaker and Watts give their readers voodoo science at its most voodoo.  They could not fail to know what they post is hoax, even if they were sucked in at first.

Even if they read this and understand it’s true and accurate, I’ll wager you won’t see any errata notices from either Watts or Hinderaker.

More, I’ll wager no one would take such a wager, not even their defenders.

Do all climate contrarians all take their marching orders from the faxes and e-mails from the GOP National Committee?

Not one of the contrarian’s work could survive half the scrutiny Phil Jones or Michael Mann has had since their server was broken into.

P.S.: These guys at Powerline have a very twisted streak, you know?

“Steve [Hayward] is also the author of the annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. The fourteenth edition of the Index was published in April by the Pacific Research Institute to coincide with Earth Day and Lenin’s birthday; it is accessible in PDF here.”

Why is the Pacific Research Institute timing a report to coincide with Lenin’s birthday?  Why would Hinderaker even joke about it?  No scientist is checking that date.  No Democrat is.  It’s like these guys study the old communists and fascists, not as a learning exercise to find mistakes to avoid as Santayana urged, but to steal the methods of the Stalinists and fascists. More snark than sense, more snark than science, at Powerline and the Pacific Research Institute.

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