Exterminate! Exterminate!

Global warming deniers such as Michael Crichton (and those who use Michael Crichton as a scientific reference, such as Sen. James Inhofe) like to paint mainstream climate scientists as irresponsible fearmongers, but here's what mainstream climate scientists do when they encounter actual irresponsible fearmongering: they rip it apart (and again here).

The "global dimming" phenomenon described therein is real, but the BBC documentary in question used it to construct a wildly exaggerated doomsday scenario. Exaggerating the probability of doomsday scenarios is, by the way, something the BBC likes to do a whole lot, whether the menace is Canary Island megatsunamis or killer asteroids. There are many ways in which the quality of the BBC's reporting vastly exceeds that of American TV news, but this is not one of them. To my rule that you should be skeptical of any revolutionary pronouncement you read in New Scientist, I should probably add that you should seek external corroboration for any end of the world you hear about via the Beeb. Unless Daleks are involved; those guys are bad news.

Meanwhile, as Tim Lambert reports, the usual suspects extrapolated from a badly garbled Reuters story to conclude that global dimming means the Kyoto Protocol will cause global warming.

Conclusion: Science can be FUN when it is twisted into hysterical craziness!