More on Climaquiddick: Eric S. Raymond on CRU's Global Warming Fraud

I've been reading the Air Vent blog periodically; and it's just fascinating -- and supremely affirming -- to follow along on this with someone how knows exactly what they're talking about. So obviously I'm pleased to find Reboot Congress' links to Eric S. Raymond's blog on technology, politics, and what not, "Armed and Dangerous." The Reboot post provides some samples from Raymond's commentary, especially some of his remarks in the comments at his posts. For example:

On 11/21, esr, set the tenor for his upcoming posts in Hiding the Decline: Prologue:

For those of you who have been stigmatizing AGW skeptics as “deniers” and dismissing their charges that the whole enterprise is fraudulent? Hope you like the taste of crow, because I do believe there’s a buttload of it coming at you. Piping hot.

Comments on Hiding the Decline: Prologue:

Those who claim “scientific consensus” as a justification for any position are attempting to perpetrate a fraud, and have only themselves to blame when it blows back on them. The proper justification of any theory is not “consensus”, it is predictive power.

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The most data could tell you is that average temperature is rising and CO2 is too. Well, except that average temperature isn’t rising – it was flat between 1998 and 2008, plunged sharply in 2008, and has not resumed the previous trendline. This is embarassing to AGW alarmists, since CO2 has kept rising and their theories require anthropogenic CO2 forcing to swamp anything that mere nature might be doing – and that’s manifestly not happening.

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My point is that the data fails to meet the criteria the alarmists themselves have set. That is, they’ve been quite willing to interpret a short-period temperature rise between 1975 and 1998 as indication that we’re on a long-term trend with that slope, but when we get a decade of flatness after that they ignore it. It’s not responsive and not honest to point out that a decade is too short to mean anything unless you’re also willing to dismiss the previous 23 years.

Over longer timeframes, I don’t think there’s any statistically significant evidence that we’ve deviated off the very shallow warming trend following the last Ice Age. If you scrutinize the alleged data claiming otherwise, you keep finding noise and fraud.

There's more at the link, via Memeorandum.

This has been a great Thanksgiving for news! Gosh, and everyone says "slow news day." Both, don't the AGW totalitarians wish?!!

See also, "'Climaquiddick'."

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez at Investor's Business Daily.