Steve vs. Mann

Orson Scott Card, writing at The Ornery American, has an excellent essay on the state of the science and politics of anthropogenic global warming. It's perhaps the best summary I've seen yet. He leads with the story of Mann's famous and fraudulent “hockey stick” curve that's been used so widely to illustrate the case for anthropogenic global warming, with this lead:

Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have.

An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."

The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.

Well, that's not acceptable.

Then he very nicely tells the story of how a Canadian businessman (Steve) did what no “scientist” deigned to do: checked and tested Mann's data and methodology, and in the process thoroughly debunked the hockey stick curve. This story was largely ignored by the lamestream media, so intent were they on the ideologically correct anthropogenic global warming narrative. It's a shame, for they missed a darned good story.

Card continues by discussing the proposed “solutions” for global warming – none of which will actually work (and all the scientists agree on that!). He also asks some interesting questions, such as: what makes us think that global warming is actually bad, no matter what the cause?

It's a very interesting read, and you shouldn't miss the whole thing.