The Tribune-Review Editorial Board Must Define "Fact" Differently Than Everyone Else

Take a look at this from today:

In preparation for their convention this month, Democrats are taking aim at so-called “climate deniers.” Lending a hand is the father of the long disputed “hockey stick” global-temperature graph, who now says facts no longer are necessary to substantiate the climate change story line.

They're going after Mann's hockey stick?  AGAIN?

Don't they know that their use of the word "disputed" is simply not supported by the scientific facts?

Let's move on:

People can simply see the outcome of man-made emissions, says Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State.

Climate models “increasingly are unnecessary,” says the climate researcher, because the manifestations of climate change are “playing out in real time.” Would these be the same climate models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which have been consistently wrong?

Ah...the computer models.  To the rightwing pundits, they don't work.

To the actual climate scientists, they do:

Climate models are unmatched in their ability to quantify otherwise qualitative hypotheses and generate new ideas that can be tested against observations. The models are far from perfect, but they have successfully captured fundamental aspects of air, ocean, and sea-ice circulations and their variability. They are therefore useful tools for estimating the consequences of humankind's ongoing and audacious planetary experiment.

The braintrust continues with its assault on facts:

Mr. Mann, who has sued a number of his critics for defamation, this spring acknowledged the early 2000 “warming slowdown.” He now says that climate change is obvious in hurricanes, flooding and droughts in different parts of the United States.

Wait..."slowdown"? Not "stop" or "pause"?  Doesn't that mean that warming continued but at a slower pace?

Doesn't that mean that the braintrust acknowledges the warming??

Then there's this braintrust embarrassment:

But just last year the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies reported that the nine-year reduction in Category 3 hurricanes, starting in 2006, beat the previous record of eight years in 1861-68. Wouldn't that suggest that temperature patterns are cyclical rather than influenced by human activity?

Yea, let's go to the facts.

The "nine year reduction" is not a global phenomenon but a local one.

From NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies:

The United States hasn't experienced the landfall of a Category 3 or larger hurricane in nine years — a string of years that's likely to come along only once every 177 years, according to a new NASA study.

And then there's this:

While the study did not delve into the meteorological causes behind this lack of major hurricane landfalls, Hall said it appears it is a result of luck.

"The last nine hurricane seasons were not weak — storms just didn't hit the U.S.," Hall said. "It seems to be an accident of geography, random good luck."

So what Scaife's braintrust uses as evidence against, really isn't evidence for anything at all.

Goshers, that's embarrassing.  But isn't that how they argue climate science over there at the Trib?

Meanwhile, it's still warming up outside and we're still to blame.  No amount of right wing propaganda is going to change that.