The first cracks begin to show

From The American Thinker:

The American scientific establishment is starting to take baby steps away from taking sides in the politics of global warming. It's sad to have to read science articles for political spin, like some announcement by the Kremlin. But climate change has now become so politicized that SCIENCE magazine reflects at least as much politics as honest science. You have to read it for spin.

SCIENCE magazine is the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is the professional advocacy group for scientists in the United States. SCIENCE is both the profession's political journal (telling readers how to get government grants, for example), and it also has original findings. So it has an openly political side, as well as a real science side.

The last issue of SCIENCE is waffling like mad on the global warming fad, warning its readers that it may not be so settled a question. Under the headline "Another Global Warming Icon Comes Under Attack," SCIENCE writer Richard Kerr writes:

"...a group of mainstream atmospheric scientists is disputing a rising icon of global warming, and researchers are giving some ground." ...

"Robert Charlson of the University of Washington, Seattle, (is) one of three authors of a commentary published online last week in Nature Reports: Climate Change. ... he and his co-authors argue that the simulation by 14 different climate models of the warming in the 20th century is not the reassuring success IPCC claims it to be."

(IPCC is the supposed international scientific consensus document on global warming - JL).

"... In the run-up to the IPCC climate science report released last February ... 14 groups ran their models under 20th-century conditions of rising greenhouse gases. ... But the group of three atmospheric scientists ... says the close match between models and the actual warming is deceptive. The match "conveys a lot more confidence [in the models] than can be supported in actuality," says Schwartz. [....]

"Greenhouse gas changes are well known, they note, but not so the counteracting cooling of pollutant hazes, called aerosols. Aerosols cool the planet by reflecting away sunlight and increasing the reflectivity of clouds. Somehow, the three researchers say, modelers failed to draw on all the uncertainty inherent in aerosols so that the 20th-century simulations look more certain than they should." [Italics added]

What? "Somehow" they missed the biggest unknown factor in climate prediction?

Highly qualified climate scientists have long warned that warming estimates have at least one giant question mark: Water vapor and other tiny particles in the atmosphere. By failing to include reliable estimates of such "hazes" (not necessarily pollutants, as the article says), global warming models are likely to err wildly on the side of warming. It's the unseen elephant in the living room. The SCIENCE article therefore finally admits what scientific critics have been saying for years.

[. . .]

Many scientists will read this item as a red flag, cautioning that all is not well in the global warming game.

Happy Earth Day - and never forget that telling the truth is the first, indispensable step toward wise management of our resources.

This has added significance because of the political nature of Science magazine. If you've heard the old joke about breaking bad news slowly then you will understand that this is a statement that "Global Warming is on the roof".

Also, I do not believe that the leftist establishment will let go of global warming until they have a new hobgoblin to frighten the masses with. I wonder what it is this time?