...And The Tribune-Review Is Back To Its Old Anti-Science Tricks

I know, I know. STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS!

But while that was happening, this was being published by the Tribune-Review editorial board.

Under a headline that read:

Trib editorial: More cause for climate skepticism

The braintrust discussed this scientific paper in the journal Nature. (Remember - they're saying it's a cause for climate skepticism.). The opening:

In case you missed it — it hasn't exactly been making the mainstream media rounds — a new study published in the professionally recognized journal Nature punches a hole in the doom-and-gloom scenarios of “settled” climate change.

The study's authors determined that the Earth apparently is less sensitive to changes in CO2 levels than previously estimated. “Our study all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities,” said lead author Peter Cox, a professor at the University of Exeter.

You'll note the irony quotes around the word "settled." They want you to think that it isn't. And they're using this article to do it.

But when you look at the paper and the surrounding commentary by its authors, the reality (and this should not be a surprise to readers skeptical of the Trib's "climate skepticism) is really quite different.

They authors of the science paper do not doubt climate science - no where in the paper's abstract do they doubt the science. Indeed what they're doing is to refine the science. With a new methodology, they point to a narrowing of possible temperature ranges if the CO2 were to double.

If the Trib braintrust were to actually do any work researching what they opine to the public about they would have found this quotation by the paper's author:

The research team believe that by dramatically reducing the range of climate sensitivity, scientists will be able to have a much more accurate picture of long-term changes to the Earth climate.

Lead-author Professor Peter Cox from the University of Exeter said: "You can think of global warming as the stretching of a spring as we hang weights from it, and climate sensitivity as related to the strength of the spring.

"To relate the observed global warming to climate sensitivity you need to know the amount of weight being added to the spring, which climate scientists call the 'forcing', and also how quickly the spring responds to added weight. Unfortunately, we know neither of these things very well."

They're refining the science - using the scientific method to come up with better science. Where in that is "cause for climate skepticism" where the theory (that the planet is warming up due to all the greenhouse gasses we've been pouring into the atmosphere for a century) somehow isn't settled?

The Tribune-Review editorial board is misleading you, yet again, on climate science.

And by "misleading", I mean "lying."