Observation versus theory: climate change.

Listen to Mark Lynas attacking Denis Avery. Listen to Denis Avery fight back. It's on the Today programme on Radio 4 (Thursday, 18th January) at 08.36. The science is all on Avery's side (quoting peer-reviewed studies of ice cores , pollen samples, stalagmites etc. which establish a 1500 year global warming cycle), yet Lynas asserts that Avery has no science to back what he's saying. Avery's key quote:

`if you have an observation it outranks a theory'.

Lynas:

`I'm very familiar with the scientific literature, and you won't find any of this stuff about 1500 year solar cycles in it, because it's simply not publishable';

Avery:

`in the book I cite a 100 different scientific studies: most of them published in the journals Nature, or Science or [Quarterly Science Review]...For you to say there is no science simply beggars the imagination'.

Of course it doesn't. This is the standard tactic of the left, of the `outraged', of the `deeply-concerned': when confronted with evidence which contradicts your tenuous theories, deny it.

I note the deployment (twice) of the phrase `global warming denier' with exactly the same emotional overtones as `holocaust denier'.

UPDATE; thanks to John Carroll, I have corrected the spelling of Lynas' surname (23.30 GMT 17 Jan 2007)