I (and others) happen to disagree with the conclusions of Fyfe et al., one of its authors being distinguished climate scientist Mike Mann. If scientists didn’t disagree, progress would be much more difficult. When we disagree with respect and politeness, everybody benefits.
There are of course a great many things we happen to agree on, one of which is that some people are exploiting their research, not representing it honestly, in order to promote an agenda.
One such is congressman Lamar Smith. Mike Mann recently penned this open letter to Smith:
Dear Congressman Lamar Smith,Please don’t misrepresent (http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/26/the-inconvenient-facts-the-media-ignores-about-climate-change/) our recent Nature Climate Change commentary (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n3/full/nclimate2938.html).
Our study does NOT support the notion of a “pause” in global warming, only a *temporary slowdown*, which was due to natural factors, and has now ended.
Our recent work (http://www.nature.com/articles/srep19831), which you fail to cite, indicates that the record warmth we are now experiencing can only be explained by human-caused global warming.
Michael E. Mann
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA
16827
Well said.
Scientists will continue to disagree, as the battle of ideas moves us further along the path to truth. Unfortunately, political opportunists like Lamar Smith not only obstruct climate action when it’s most needed, they make it next to impossible for the voting public to know what it is that we disagree about. Of this you can be sure: it’s not what Lamar Smith claims.
Open Mind 
Of course, global warming denialists are in denial that it has now ended.
With respect, I wish Dr. Mann had also made it explicit that the slow down, if there was one, was in surface temperatures only. Ocean heat content didn’t slow down at all.
After a hard fought primary, the Texas Democratic Party now has a candidate to challenge Congressman Smith in November. His name is Tom Wakely and his website is located at: wakely2016.com
[Response: Congratulations, and best of luck.]
link:
http://www.wakely2016.com/
imho, site could use a mite more pizzazz. Good luck!
Tom, I wandered around your web site a bit. I noticed that you don’t appear to provide any contact information, such as a PO box or e-mail address. It’s important for people to be able to contacted you and I don’t mean via Facebook. I, for one, don’t use Facebook. And, if you provide contact info, you must be sure that the mail gets read, if not by you, then someone who is directed to sort thru all the flow to find the important stuff.
You (and the Democratic Party) have got a big fight before you. Just last night, Ted Cruz stated:
“We need to be pursuing space-based missile defense. One of the advantages of space-based missile defense is that if you have a missile launch in North Korea or you have a missile launch in Iran, a space-based missile defense can take out one or two or three missiles before it can cross over and do damage.”
This is a very dangerous statement, IMHO, as it shows that Sen. Cruz has no clue about how difficult it would be to achieve even the limited defense shield he mentions. The very idea of a defensive shield in space would promote a sense of invulnerability which could only be tested during an actual attack. Cruz and Mr. Smith both refuse to consider the full scientific information regarding climate change and I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Smith also would support an orbiting ABM system. Do we see a pattern here?
Lamar Smith distorts research?
Well, that’s a… a… uh, what’s that word? Like ‘shock’, but the opposite.
Yes. In other headline news, Apple sells iPhones.
Politicians trying to control and punish ideologically inconvenient science, that’s very much Soviet or Putin-land, it is not a feature of the free world anyway. If Lamar S dislikes the science, why can’t he just ignore it, like politicians commonly do in free democracies…?
I think he tried that, but it refused to go away. ;-)
It sounds a lot like the CSIRO scientists in Australia who were fired for measuring bad news about climate change. Why do you suggest that only Putin does things like that?? James Hansen was muzzled by the Bush administration and lost funding in earlier times.
Tamino, note that kulolmak’s comment is just spam. It copies parts of Magma’s comment, and the name is an URL to some spam from a Turkish website