An interesting case-study surfaced today on the whole topic of misinformation.
I wasn't aware of the paper in question until someone posted the following on a Guardian comments thread this morning:
The Cameron cabinet has obviously just learnt about a study, published on 15/04/11 in The Journal of Climate, that has scientifically proven that the greenhouse gas theory is not a valid theory.
This being the case, the IPCC's mantra - that Co2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is causing catastrophic global warming - is false.
This means the Climate Change Act is now effectively obsolete, and that all the green policies to reduce Co2 emissions, in order to try and reduce global temperature, are obsolete and will result in nil effect, except for the fact that they have significantly increased the cost of living for everyone, and made a miniscule minority filthy rich.
You can read about it here:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1
The last part of the first paragraph caught my attention. I followed the link and posted the abstract. The abstract said:
Long-Term Trends in Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance over the U.S. Southern Great Plains
P. Jonathan Gero
Space Science and Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
David D. Turner
NOAA / National Severe Storms Laboratory, Norman, Oklahoma and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
Abstract
A trend analysis was applied to a 14-year time series of downwelling spectral infrared radiance observations from the Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) located at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) site in the U.S. Southern Great Plains. The highly accurate calibration of the AERI instrument, performed every 10 minutes, ensures that any statistically significant trend in the observed data over this time can be attributed to changes in the atmospheric properties and composition, and not to changes in the sensitivity or responsivity of the instrument. The measured infrared spectra, numbering over 800,000, were classified as clear-sky, thin cloud, and thick cloud scenes using a neural network method. The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-year time period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site. The AERI data also show many statistically significant trends on annual, seasonal, and diurnal time scales, with different trend signatures identified in the separate scene classifications. Given the decadal time span of the dataset, effects from natural variability should be considered in drawing broader conclusions. Nevertheless, this data set has high value due to the ability to infer possible mechanisms for any trends from the observations themselves, and to test the performance of climate models.
The bit in bold is mine.
Googling the title of the paper lead to several pages worth of links to "denialist" blogs.
My response in the Guardian thread was as follows:
Let's just repeat that:
and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site
What they do not say:
has scientifically proven that the greenhouse gas theory is not a valid theory
Just to make sure you understand:
A sensitive auto-calibrating detector is deployed at a single site on one continent. It detects statistically significant trends in downwelling spectral IR radiance (decrease, summer-autumn-winter; increase spring). These it attributes primarily to long-term changes in cloudiness above this single site.
At the same time, just in case I had misunderstood (and we can all do that), I emailed the lead author. This evening, I had a reply. No, he told me, I had it just right, and the other Guardian commentator was completely off the mark.
In reflection on the day, it seems to me that "The Great Global Warming Hoax" is not that the theory is a scam: instead it is that almost on a daily basis, something is distorted by the opposition and sent out through the echo-chamber, so that it appears on site after site within 48 hours, and thereby onto Google, the mainstream media, etc. Perhaps this thread should be retitled: "The Great Anti-Science Hoax"?
Cheers - John