To mix a metaphor, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop before jumping on the bandwagon. I’m referring to the paper submitted to the American Physical Society by Christopher Monckton, claiming that the IPCC’s estimate of the Earth’s climate sensitivity (the amount of warming that occurs as CO2 increases) had been vastly overestimated: Rumor Debunked: Physicists Did Not Flip-Flop on Global Warming:

Stories of the supposed policy reversal began popping up after an article by Christopher Monckton, a politician and a former policy advisor in Margaret Thatcher’s administration, submitted an article in an online newsletter of the APS Forum on Physics and Society. The article claimed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had overestimated the Earth’s climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide (or how much the global average temperature will change given a certain amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere).

In the article, Monckton, the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, also claims that changes in solar activity are behind the warming trend of the past few decades, an idea that has been refuted by several climate scientists.

A note in red lettering above the article states that it has not been peer-reviewed and that “its conclusions are in disagreement with the overwhelming opinion of the world scientific community. The Council of the American Physical Society disagrees with this article’s conclusions.”

The issue’s so politicized at this point, I put all global warming news releases (especially those claiming to debunk it) on a 48-hour hold. You can’t really trust either side to be completely up front.

If you feel like a walk down Mathematics Lane to look at something concrete, though, Tim Lambert says Monckton triple-counted some of the evidence, and has equations with funny little Greek symbols in them to prove it.

Lambert’s a little off base in one assertion, though:

Thanks to Drudge, all the right-wing blogs have been touting a story alleging the American Physical Society has reversed its stance on global warming.

Not all.

Meanwhile at American Thinker, Marc Sheppard has a response from Christopher Monckton, with a demand that the APS remove their “not peer reviewed” notice from the article: American Thinker Blog: The American Physical Society Owes Lord Monckton an Immediate Apology.

As of today, the notice is still there.