Holy Conflicting Science Batman! – Real Climate STILL Plays Defense Worse Than The Cleveland Browns!
Well, we may be having a cold winter, but the Climate Wars are heating up! Real Climate has posted a rebuttal to an article that appeared in Forbes, titled “Hot Sensations Vs. Cold Facts”, and dutifully goes about the business of debunking this supposed “blistering attack on climate science”.
They start thus:
Bell uses the key technique that denialists [my empasis] use in debates, dubbed by Eugenie Scott the “Gish gallop”, named after a master of the style, anti-evolutionist Duane Gish. The Gish gallop raises a barrage of obscure and marginal facts and fabrications that appear at first glance to cast doubt on the entire edifice under attack, but which on closer examination do no such thing. In real-time debates the number of particularities raised is sure to catch the opponent off guard; this is why challenges to such debates are often raised by enemies of science. Little or no knowledge of a holistic view of any given science is needed to construct such scattershot attacks.
They proceed to take apart the assertions made in the Forbes article:
Record Low 2009 and 2010 Cyclonic Activity Reported
Bell’s first claim is not a confidence builder.
It’s possible that Bell is referencing a specific metric of hurricane activity (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), but that does not give a full story, nor does it show ‘record lows’. According to NOAA the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, which ended Dec 31, was one of the busiest on record. In the Atlantic Basin a total of 19 named storms formed – tied with 1887 and 1995 for third highest on record. Of those, 12 became hurricanes – tied with 1969 for second highest on record. Five of those reached major hurricane status of Category 3 or higher. 2010 was just behind 2004 and 2005 for earliest occurrence of a third category 4 hurricane.
Global Warming Hysteria | Sonicfrog January 7, 2011 | 
Comments (1)