Information is Beautiful Q.E.D.s Global Warming denialist claims

One of the best educational sites out there would have to be Information is Beautiful, where David McCandless takes on any number of controversial, mythical or otherwise popular matters of debate and produces detailed yet elegant – and, well, beautiful – visual representations of the data along with accompanying text and explanations. It’s a wonderful resource for getting the clean and clear facts without having to perform hours of research of your own (because you know that just bites).

Now, McCandless has taken on some of the more prominent claims made by anthropogenic global warming denialists and compared them to the scientific consensus, and uses ample amounts of research data to conclude just which side is blowing smoke out of its ass. I don’t think it’s a surprise that the scientists are the ones repeatedly proven right – I mean, who knew that the guys with the actual knowledge, skills and experience to be experts in their fields would know better than random cranks and pseudo-intellectual malcontents? Shocking, no?

It’s a beautiful dissection of denialist claims, including those such as “CO₂ doesn’t cause temperature rises!” (whereas temperature rises aren’t caused by C0₂ levels, merely exacerbated – greatly – by them), or that “the ‘hockey stick’ temperature graph has been discredited!” (whereas combining all the data we have clearly shows a “hockey stick” formation), or that “ice core data is unreliable!” (when it plain and simply is reliable), or that that – of course – “‘Climategate’ proves scientists are committing fraud and distorting data!” (whereas this is bullshit based on utter misrepresentations of what scientists actually said and meant in those eMails), and so on. It’s actually quite thorough in its way, and very … (running out of alternatives to “beautiful”, here).

Of course, denialist cranks will always find a way to deride these statistics – probably that they’re all fake or something (who knows how their warped minds work anymore) – but for the rest of people who do have some shred of common sense left in their heads, this is a clear representation of just how denialists are plainly and utterly wrong, as they always are, and that the scientific community actually knows what the hell it’s doing whereas denialists … don’t.

(via Bad Astronomy)

Technorati tags: Global Warming · climate change · Information is Beautiful · denialism · David McCandless · science