McIlheran turns his knob

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's resident "right-wing guy" and lately eminent dendroclimatologist Dr. Patrick McIlheran, Ph.D.:

The British center admitted it threw out its original data on which it pinned its predictions of disaster. Other researchers, thus, cannot check the claims.

Absolute nonsense. At some time during the 1980s, the CRU did not store duplicate data sets which are still available elsewhere.

McIlheran doesn't even know what a wide variety of climate data sets are available and therefore how closely they all agree, so instead he diligently picks through the Washington D.C. Moonie Times for regurgitated Competitive Enterprise Institute* press releases.

And then has the temerity to call this journalism.

For one thing, many of these data sets are online. For another, the CRU is in England, which is governed by different laws and where not all data are subject to the same freedom of information guidelines.

Other data sets are retained by their respective countries' meteorological services. So if the CEI is ultimately rebuffed by NASA on grounds that it filed a vexatious lawsuit, it can always turn its efforts toward Botswana (member since 1967).

McIlheran also manages to turn a lawyer at the right-wing think tank into a "researcher."

Much like a coal industry consultant was turned into Galileo.

As for the Superfreakonomics guy, he doesn't appear to be apprehending any available data either.

Incidentally this, too, is addlepated gibberish:

As the brewing Climategate scandal is proving, data surrounding the global warming theory was manipulated and manufactured to 'hide the decline,' in temperatures.

"Policy veteran" Brian Fraley (and it gets worse).

In the particular, celebrated example the policy veteran Fraley hasn't the foggiest notion that he's talking about, there is no decline in temperatures. There is an increase in temperatures. Or maybe Fraley has a detailed explanation for the period of discrepancy between instrument and certain proxy measurements. If he does, then he's advised to contact the editors of Nature at his earliest convenience.

And if the veteran policy analyst hurries, then he can share a teleprompter with Obama in Copenhagen next week.

* A beneficiary of Bradley Foundation money, which could in some way account for McIlheran's transparently dissembling shenanigans on the pages of the daily newspaper. Sorry, "journalism."