penn and teller did something like this in (i believe) their episode "the best" of their show bullshit. they allowed some restaurant patrons to think that they were eating the finest gourmet food, when in actuality it was the cheapest food available, made to look good and thoroughly talked up by the waiter.

http://www.tv.com/penn-and-teller-bullsh!/the-best/episode/424639/summary.html?tag=ep_list;ep_title;12

i thought the plural of mario was mariae.

Shrdlu, you may well be right, but "erring on the side of caution" is a policy decision, not a scientific one.

climate change questions are best answered by scientists, not political activists. the fact that so many people care about the answers to these questions is a bad sign. if this were a question of whether the universe is going to be expanding forever or eventually contracting, most boing boing readers would approach the subject with scientific curiosity. they wouldn't get angry about either answer. i think that's the right way to look at the issue of climate change.

it is true that some conclusions are almost universally accepted by scientists and intelligent people. evolution is an example of this. i do find it laughable when someone denies scientific facts in order to fit the world to their beliefs (whether those beliefs be religious, political, or simply self-interested).

unfortunately, climate change questions have not all been answered conclusively. progress has been made, but politics keeps getting in the way. this little squabble between websites is not helping us find answers.

the blog that is linked to, the blog that is angry about the success of the "anti-science" blog, is actually a blog about psychology. and they're so petty as to refuse to even link to the blog they are complaining about (at least in that post). the link is http://www.climateaudit.org/ for anyone who actually wants to read what the site has to say.

i actually went there and read some of it. i'm not a scientist, but it all seems on the level from what i could tell. i'm sure politically active scientists and statisticians could find hundred of mistakes and misrepresentations in its content. but i'm also quite sure that politically active scientists and statisticians from the other side of the issue could find hundreds of errors in the content of the "anti-antiscience" blogs as well.

i'm not being paid off by the military-industrial complex. i'm not a conservative republican. i just think that this debate is still a scientific one. let's keep politics out of it.