S. Fred Singer completely loses it

"The American Thinker" only appeals to those thinking with half (or less) of their brain, the part that controls the right side of their political functioning. And TAT is hosting a new op-ed (I'd rather call it a dumb-ed) from archaic dinosaur climate skeptic Fred Singer, making rather audacious claims that new investigations of climate change by CoochieCoochie-nelli and the incoming Republican raucous caucus will, in his stunning words, "Or Hearings on Climategate by the U.S. Congress may uncover the "smoking gun" that demonstrates that the warming trend used by the IPCC does not really exist."

or alternatively:
"It has become increasingly clear that any observed warming during the past century is of natural origin and that the human contribution is insignificant. It is doubtful that any significant warming is attributable to greenhouse gases at all."

Oh dear f*cking God, Fred. Not even Patrick Michaels will agree with you. Any skeptical scientist with a shred of decency and honesty will have to admit that increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are going to cause some warming. The skeptical position that is most in vogue is that a) there might be feedbacks negating some of the warming, b) we can deal with it if we have to, and c) we have more important things to worry about right now.

But there's a warming trend, and there's nothing else that can cause the warming trend except increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. And the warming trend is satellite data, dating from 1979, with an upward slope. Yes, the IPCC uses this. And no, no matter what Coochie and the Repub Retards say about it, it's not going to go away and it's not caused by anything natural. And that trend should be Exhibit 1 when Dr. Roy Spencer testifies in front of Congress. As in, "Please explain the warming trend in your satellite data, Dr. Spencer." Not to mention the fact that the same satellite data show stratospheric cooling, which is explained by the fact that the stratosphere cools radiatively, and if it gets less heat coming upward from Earth's surface, it's going to cool off. Why does it get less heat coming upward from Earth's surface? The increasing heat-trapping caused by increasing concentrations of CO2. (How does Dr. Roy explain that? More clouds? When there isn't any conclusive evidence of more clouds over the length of his data set? Ouch, that'll leave a mark.)

The Republicans can shorely try to skew testimony and debate toward the email imprecations of a few climate scientists. And talk about suppression of papers submitted to peer-reviewed journals (even if the editorial process was roundly circumvented if you actually look at what happened). But no amount of investigation and Congressional hearing grandstanding will get around the fact that virtually all the direct observational data, and virtually all of what is called "phenological indicators" (things like
butterfly emergence,
spring flowering,
ice thaw on lakes,
bird nesting,
and hundreds of other examples) point in the same direction -- WARMING.