New Scientist has published a Climate Myths Special today which has been welcomed with open arms in some corners:
"I have already forwarded links to my local FoE and Social Forum lists, to draw other people's attention to it." says one particularly diligent commenter in the NS Environment Blog.
I don't know why a publication like New Scientist would take sides like this in such a controversial issue. If they're wrong, they end up with their reputation in tatters, and nobody will notice if they're right. Climate Audit has already pointed out the excision of embarrassing data from their 1000 year temperature graph, (compiled for them by Dr Rob Wilson of the University of Edinburgh).
Click for full size
If you follow the dark blue line (Briffa 2001) into the choke point of the graph in the 1960s you will notice that it doesn't actually come out again. It's hard to see because it has been stopped right on the choke point so that you can't make out where the line ends. Was there no data after 1960? Unfortunately for the commercial reputation of New Scientist there was. In a previous paper using the same raw data, Briffa had shown the full set of results through to 1994. And of course, the proxy suggests that temperatures were in fact falling throughout most of the rest of the century (the green line on this second chart).
Click for full size