Mind the Red Herrings

On Stoat, a new paper says that misinformation causes confusion about otherwise settled climate science, and suggests that the "direct study of misinformation" can potentially "sharpen student critical thinking skills, raise awareness of the processes of science such as peer review, and improve understanding of the basic science." William M. Connolley looks at more papers in another post, exclaiming "Good grief, the world is full of new science all of a sudden." Two of the papers offer explanations as to why atmospheric methane levels have not increased as much as expected: it could be "reduced microbial sources in the Northern Hemisphere" and "reduced emissions from rice agriculture in Asia," or it could be due to changes in fossil fuel emissions. And on Greg Laden's Blog, the Inspector General of the National Science Foundation concludes Michael E. Mann did not unfairly doctor the "hockey stick graph" of Climategate fame. Greg says this blow to climate change denialists still "won't have an immediate effect on their use of questionable tactics or their profusion of beliefs that are just too bizarre to believe that they actually hold."

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