Is The Sky Still Falling?

Remember that old Bloom County cartoon where Oliver has devised a Grand Unification Theory of the Universe that accounts for everything except flightless waterfowl, causing Opus to disappear before our eyes? Eventually Oliver notices that he forgot to carry the seven, causing a jangled Opus to reappear.

Well, something similar seems to have happened regarding that much-ballyhooed Man-made natural disaster, global warming. According to Richard Muller, Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce a major study purporting to link a serious warming trend directly to Industrialization.

Remember, there are two fundamental questions in this debate:

1) Is the planet getting warmer?

2) If so, is this the result, in whole or in part, of human activity?

Personally, I believe the answers at this point are 1) maybe and 2) nobody knows. Muller happens to think that the answers are 1) maybe and 2) probably. But we both agree that it is in everybody's interest to recognize and reject bogus data in pursuit of the correct answers, whatever they may be. Unfortunately, given the political issues involved, I doubt very much whether very many people are going to listen to his call.

UPDATE: Message to the Leather Penguin -

"TThhhhpptt!" indeed.