The Well-Written WSJ Rebuttal

The statement by climate scientists in today's WSJ is extremely well-written -- concise, unacademic, forceful, and confident without being scolding. (And I'm amazed the Journal published it; I'd love to have been a mouse in that editorial meeting.) I thought this was especially well said:

Climate experts know that the long-term warming trend has not abated in the past decade. In fact, it was the warmest decade on record. Observations show unequivocally that our planet is getting hotter. And computer models have recently shown that during periods when there is a smaller increase of surface temperatures, warming is occurring elsewhere in the climate system, typically in the deep ocean. Such periods are a relatively common climate phenomenon, are consistent with our physical understanding of how the climate system works, and certainly do not invalidate our understanding of human-induced warming or the models used to simulate that warming.

You know, if you stood on, say, the Moon, and looked at the Earth and wondered, Hmm, is that planet warming or cooling or what, would you go and make measurements only on its surface? No, you would not -- you and your people would fan out across the planet and measure everywhere you could -- down in the oceans, throughout the atmosphere, across the poles, and so on. Making thermal judgements about a planet based only on what's going on its surface would be silly -- like the proverbial schmuck who lost his keys and is looking under a street light because that's where the lighting is good.