Wouldn’t work – sceptics don’t revere the authority of journals.

But in a sense, it’s already been tried. People post their pet theories and papers to high-level sceptic blogs, for which the comments count as a sort of ‘peer-review’. Some of these presentations come to anti-AGW conclusions, but have errors in them. Generally speaking, sceptic commenters rip into them with as much enthusiasm as the pro-AGW papers, although they’re usually more polite about it.

Take the Loehle reconstruction, for example. Having seen the mess the hockeyteam had made of their stats, he decided to produce a reconstruction that didn’t include dodgy tree rings, where each contributor was calibrated to temperature on a physical basis by the original team, rather than being fitted to the modern temperature record, and giving a simple equal-weighting combination. And lo and behold, it showed a MWP as warm as the modern period. He got it published in a peer-reviewed journal. The sceptics would be so pleased, right?

No. The Climate Audit crowd pointed out that he’d got the uncertainty estimates wrong. He agreed they had a point, but said he couldn’t see how they could be calculated, so several of the high-level stats professors who hang around Climate Audit told him. He produced a corrigendum to correct and improve the reconstruction (which still showed the MWP not significantly less than the modern period) within a few months of the original paper.

If you can get your hoax past the scrutiny of sceptic bloggers like Climate Audit, Lucia’s Blackboard, Roy Spencer, the Pielkes, the Idsos, and so on, then you may get some limited success with your ruse. But even then, none of them claim to be infallible, and so long as the errors are not obvious – and you’ll find it hard to get their approval if they are – then nobody will care. Because we don’t work on an authority/reputation basis.

With headlines and phrases like these is it any wonder people don’t know what to believe.

I usually disinguish vaguely between “postmodernism,” the academic paradigm, and “postmodernity,” the associated culture that gave rise to and/or was produced by it. Right wing “skepticism” is in the latter camp.

I’d summarize it this way: Climate Skeptics, IDers, anti-vaxxers, etc are interested in discrediting the scientific establishment so they can replace it with their own — it’s just a tactic they use to get on top. A more truly postmodern person would be wary of science AND himself, because he has a deep respect for the fallibility of human intellect, including himself.

I guess it’s a question of whether “postmodernism” is defined as the incoherent ramblings of Derrida, or a cultural sentiment that makes us excessively wary of any authority claiming to know what’s best.

P: I think Judith Warner’s article was brilliant! It clearly laid out the hard right misinformation anti-science campaign.

And it ackowledged there has been a hard left ideological fringe before too. Anyone hear of Lysenko?

She was just noting there can be ideological fringe on BOTH sides of the political spectrum and are opposed to the science.

It was a pro science article. Global warming is a strong SCIENTIFIC theory. It is ideologues who attack it. (And yes I have seen a couple on the looney hard LEFT fringe that have attacked it too. James Inhofe found them…

Extremist ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum, if they don’t follow the science, can both be bad.

P: Such TRASH!

The petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) between 1999 and 2001 has been completely debunked

The study in 2001 encouraged anyone to mail in their name and their academic degree. Although the Very few (less than 10%) even claimed to have a degree specializing in environmental sciences. Independent verification found serious problems with the counts.
Summary:
• Anyone could sign without outside verification (FROM OISM) .
* Forms on site encouraged them to be distributed to friends to sign and send in.
* Independent confirmations outside OISM have found individuals claiming they did never signed the petition.
• Individuals who signed were not require to have ANY expertise in climatology. Indeed most who signed had degrees in outside fields such as COMPUTER science, economics, dentistry, etc…
• Obviously as a sign in form, this was not a controlled sample that could be used to estimate the % of individuals who agreed/disagreed with their proposition.

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Per Wikipedia:
<>
On his website, Chris Colose [19] reviewed 60 names, including 54 alleged phD’s, and found no one with a specialty or publication in climate science. The names included the first 10 in the “A” column and the first two phD’s in each subsequent letter (two for “B,” two for “C,” and so on).
In 2001, Scientific American reported:
“ Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition —- one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers – a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.[21]
”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition