It isn’t often that I agree with Eugene Robinson but this time, I agree with him. His column E-mails Don’t Prove Warming is a Fraud is actually right, though not for the reasons he says.

Stop hyperventilating, all you climate change deniers. The purloined e-mail correspondence published by skeptics last week, portraying some leading climate researchers as petty, vindictive and tremendously eager to make their data fit accepted theories, does not prove that global warming is a fraud.

He’s right in that the e-mails alone don’t prove that AGW is junk science. The fact that they’ve had to delete emails with contradictory information proves that AGW is junk science. The fact that John Holdren first discredited, then admitted that Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon were right that Michael Mann’s infamous Hockey Stick Graph is wildly inaccurate is proof that AGW is junk science.

Mr. Robinson’s column is predictable. He’s one of the most reliable, and brain dead, shills within the progressive movement, rivalling even Eleanor Clift, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd in that respect. That reliability is how he can say this without hesitation:

To plot temperatures going back hundreds or thousands of years, long before anyone was taking measurements, you need a set of data that can serve as an accurate proxy. The width of tree rings correlates well with observed temperature readings, and extrapolating that correlation into the past yields the familiar “hockey stick” graph, fairly level temperatures for eons, followed by a sharp incline beginning around 1900. This is attributed to human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting increase in heat-trapping atmospheric carbon dioxide.

While it’s true that scientists weren’t recording temperatures and patterns in 1000 A.D., when the Hockey Stick Graph starts, other data exists to prove that there have significant fluctuations in the earth’s temperatures. The Medieval Warm Period didn’t happen if you trust Dr. Mann’s Hockey Stick Graph. The MWP was followed by the Mini-Ice Age, which doesn’t exist according to the Hockey Stick Graph, either.

Considering the fact that Dr. Mann, Dr. Jones and others propose shutting out scientists that disagree with their analyses from the peer-review process isn’t dissimilar from Al Gore’s wild allegations, then his refusal to debate serious people on the subject. The people that suggest that they know more than other accredited scientists are blowhards and political ideologues.

Had Dr. Mann and Dr. Jones not used such extravagant trickery, they still would’ve been ridiculed. There are wild inaccuracies in their studies, inaccuracies that still haven’t been explained to anyone but the most devout AGW believers.

It would be great if this were all a big misunderstanding. But we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and we know the planet is hotter than it was a century ago. The skeptics might have convinced each other, but so far they haven’t gotten through to the vanishing polar ice.

What we don’t know is whether one has to do with the other. Until there’s proof that one is caused by the other, we don’t have anything. Just because a group of ideologically-driven scientists say so doesn’t mean anything to John Q. Public.

Until these scientists start making decisions based SOLELY on proof, not politics, people will be justifiably skeptical.

Technorati: Science, Michael Mann, Hockey Stick Graph, Phil Jones, John Holdren, Al Gore, Ideologues, Sallie Baliunas, Willie Soon, Mini-Ice Age

Cross-posted at California Conservative