“An open letter to the U.N from climate skeptics” (2012-11-29). Take that, U.N.! You’ve been sent a letter from Anthony Watts and other scientists! It’s in a newspaper! No talking about weather and climate in the same sentence!

The Financial Post is a reliably partisan Canadian right-wing newspaper and a tightly connected part of the climate denial circle-jerk. They’ve published an opinion piece/”letter” from 125 (or is it 129?) scientists informing the U.N. that they know all about climate and Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon doesn’t.

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions. – OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125 scientists.

“no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years”! “variations in solar output”! “Climate changes naturally all the time”! Now that is one rigorous evidence-based smack-down. Well, more like a rehash of various vague, debunked, denialist talking points.

Who are these 125 129 scientists? Well Anthony’s one (except not). So is Lord Monckton (except not). Plenty of engineers, geologists and physicists too, as well as the usual think tank flunkies. Do I have to go any further?

Didn’t think so. This is just axe-grinders engaged in empty political posturing because the UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Doha this week. Distract, delay, assert, confuse.

Thanks for Phil Clarke’s comment drawing my attention to this amusing bunk.

Updates:

I notice that the Financial Post has adjusted their article title to correct their inability to count to 129. It’s now amended to “125+”.

Astronomer Phil Plait has also covered the dumbnitude in Doubling Down on Climate Change Denial:

The letter itself is based on a single claim. So let’s be clear: If that claim is wrong, so is the rest of the letter.

Guess what? That claim is wrong. So blatantly wrong, in fact, it’s hard to imagine anyone could write it with a straight face. It says:

“The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.”

This is simply, completely, and utterly false. The Met Office is the national weather service for the United Kingdom. In October 2012, they updated their database of global surface temperature measurements, a compendium of temperatures taken over time by weather stations around the planet. David Rose, a climate change denier who can charitably be said to have trouble with facts, cherry-picked this dataset and published a horrendously misleading graph in that bastion of scientific thought, the Daily Mail, saying the measurements show there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years.

But he did this by choosing a starting point on his graph that gave the result he wanted, a graph that looks like there’s been no warming since 1997. But if you show the data properly, you see there has been warming:

“New Hampshire to Consider Withdrawing from RGGI“. Will New Hampshire withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an inter-state power plant CO₂ emissions cap-and-trade agreement? Who knows? Ric Werme admits he doesn’t. But it’s fun to talk as if it might happen, because you can pretend that there is an anti-Climate Change mood in the air.

There’s an entertaining “Live Free or Die” libertarian theme in the comments.