Fake climate change paper - November 09, 2007
Arguments over global warming have taken a strange turn. There’s a big hubbub in the blogosphere over a fake paper purporting to refute “manmade global warming theory”.
The paper itself appears to have been removed from the web, but google’s cache of it is still there. There’s a cache of the “editorial” that goes with it as well. The paper concluded “We have no choice but to conclude that the recent increase in global temperatures, which has caused so much disquiet among policy makers, bears no relation to industrial emissions, but is in fact a natural phenomenom.”
However the listed authors and their departments don’t seem to exist. The listed editorial board is similarly suspect. These facts are causing some amusement at the Register, as well as on various blogs. One theory is that this spoof is the work of UK author David Thorpe (Desmog blog, Prometheus). However Thorpe has denied this:
Let's be clear. I did not write the content of the site. Someone else did. I designed the site because I was asked to by someone who knew I would be sympathetic to the joke. I appreciate it looks as though I wrote it. I even wish I had written it, because it's very funny. But I didn't.
This does seem to have been a just a joke, played on some of the more outspoken (or less careful) critics of climate change argument. However they are already repurposing it to show themselves in a good light. “I, along with a ton of other bloggers, and even Rush Limbaugh fell for what has turned out to be a complete hoax,” says Peer Review Florida. “Despite the the fact that the paper I used as the lead in to a discussion was false, it remains true that global warming advocates have a religious zeal about defending their beliefs on the subject and those who dare disagree are scorned.”
We await with interest the other papers listed to appear in the journal...
Image: NASA