Anthony illustrates Evans' science with cartoon of a CO2 molecule (or maybe deadmau5).

Climate models go cold. Hey, we’re golden! Anthony Watts assures us that “Carbon warming [is] too minor to be worth worrying about”! After-all, there’s a paranoid right-wing opinion piece by Australian crank David Evans in Canada’s Financial Post newspaper that proves it.

David Evans tells us that he’s “a scientist” (although not a climate scientist as he likes to imply) who used to be an “alarmist”. But he learned that the “whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s”? Wow! Did someone just hit the That Was Easy button?

Evans is mainly interested in muttering about political corruption, gravy trains and “the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome”. But here’s the core of Evans’ claim (note his inability to solve the equation 1 + 3 = x):

For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.

So… if Evans can disprove the implied relative contributions to warming, which he has already got wrong, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down I guess. Evans sets to work. No tropospheric “hotspot”, as posited by climate science, was found in the upper atmosphere! [Except it was.] Evans says all that water vapor was turning into clouds that offset the warming. [Except it didn’t.] Those corrupt climate scientists never noticed the clouds, so they’re wrong! [Except clouds have always been part of climate modeling.]

With this very shaky underpinning, Evans proceeds to assure us that the reason climate scientists won’t admit their error now is because they want to keep their “well-paying jobs with lavish research grants” and are slavishly eager to offer “political power to their government masters.” Why, they “ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence” [nope], and they  are playing tricks with “the way they measure temperature” [a lame invocation of Anthony’s discredited science fair project], and they ignore the satellite record [you know, the ones they put up there].

Kind of confusing until you realise that this whole dissertation was made at an Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally, probably from Evan’s Perth, Australia front porch. The only science in his entire rant is Anthony’s addition of a Wikipedia CO2 molecule cartoon. There could be some nasty backlash over his inconvenient admission that CO2 has even a slight warming effect though…

2011-04-13 Update: Michael Tobis highlights Evans’ flim-flam at Only In It For The Gold.