The Braintrust Keeps Trying To Debunk The IPCC...

...and they keep failing.

From today's Tribune-Review:

Cooler heads must deflect the latest blast of hot air from the discredited United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And then:

The International Climate Science Coalition notes that 16 years without warming show U.N. climate models are wrong and weather's extremes remain within natural variations' range. Yet the U.N. climate change panel urges draconian anti-growth measures.

Yea, but we've already looked at that, haven't we?

Yea, like 5 days ago.

I guess we'll have to do it again.

The "16 years without warming" meme is what they call "selective evidence" and I'll let desmogblog explain.  But first, some of their artwork:

They're gonna be talking about that small area of the upward sweep marked by that big red arrow.  By the way, do you notice the upward sweep from just after 1900 to now?  So even if the line is, in fact, "leveling off" that still wouldn't discredit the upward sweep that represents the rising temperatures of the 20th century now, would it?

Anyway, back to desmogblog.  They explain that 1998 and 2005 were rather hot "el Nino" years and that:

After 1998 and 2005 global temperatures were not as hot, but still on the whole still much hotter than most years prior to 1998.

So the temperature is still clearly going up globally as can be seen by the long-term upward trend over time. But like any good conspiracy theory, if you look hard and long enough you will find “proof” of your theory — and the climate deniers seem to be clinging on to this latest proof pretty hard.

And again, this issue is already addressed in the IPCC summary report:

Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere, where such assessment is possible (medium confidence). The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C2 over the period 1880 to 2012, when multiple independently produced datasets exist.

In addition to robust multi-decadal warming, the globally averaged surface temperature exhibits substantial decadal and interannual variability (Figure SPM.1a). Due to this natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade).

Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere. On a global scale, the ocean warming is largest near the surface, and the upper 75 m warmed by 0.11 [0.09 to 0.13] °C per decade over the period 1971 to 2010. It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971. [Italics in original]

They never learn, do they?

The Trib also makes this claim:

The U.N. panel again is providing “cover for costly new regulations and energy rationing” even though the EPA admits “electricity regulations will have no discernible impact on the global temperature,” U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, told The Hill newspaper.

Here's what the fool said in The Hill:

“Yet the EPA has admitted that electricity regulations will have no discernible impact on the global temperature,” he added. “America cannot afford to drive its economy over a cliff with the hopes that the rest of the world will make the same mistake.”

So far, I haven't been able to track down when the EPA actually admitted to anything of the sort (doesn't mean it's not out there, it just means I haven't found it yet).  But I suspect that the rhetorical ruse being played here is found in the phrase "global temperature."  Could the EPA have merely been pointing out that a great many other countries would also have to limit their carbon emissions that this global problem can't just be solved by the US limiting its own carbon emissions?  That a whole mess of other stuff has to happen as well?

That's what I suspect.  But until I see for sure, I'm withholding judgement.

In either case, the Trib Braintrust is still wrong about the science and they're doing it now so often that it has to be an embarrassment to any rational person working at that newspaper.