It's about time RealClimate finally gets around to debunking the Wegmen critique of the Mann et al. paper showing the famous hockey stick graph. You know, this one.



So here's the history. Almost ten years ago now, Mann et al. published a paper documenting a sudden increase in global mean temperature in the last century determined by combining data from several temperature proxies. The data has since been expanded on and recently confirmed by the National Academy of Sciences as scientifically valid.

Not to be deterred, the global warming deniers, such as those at the Wall Street Journal, have latched on to a report and testimony by a George Mason statistician (ahem George Mason = industry's bitch) suggesting that the statistical methods in the original Mann paper were flawed.

Well, I'm hopeless on climate science, but I know who the experts are. For one, if the National Academies gathers a few dozen scientists together to evaluate a paper, and they give it thumbs up, I'm pretty satisfied. Then, if the experts at RealClimate show that the statistical criticisms don't even alter the data (the reconstructed data corrected for the statistical flaw is the green line above compared to the original red line) I'm convinced.

It's just like the denial of reality you get from WSJ on supply side economics. It doesn't matter how much data shows it's a completely intellectually bankrupt philosophy, they'll always latch on to some flawed piece of "hokum" so they never have to reevaluate their position. Their self-serving need to deny global warming and the failure of supply-side economics for the sake of near-sighted industrial concerns blocks any kind of rational discourse. They will see the coasts under 25m of water and the country lodged in economic depression before they admit they underestimated these problems. And even then I doubt they will say they're wrong. They'll find a way to blame Democrats, I'm just sure of it.