Goodshepherd, there are indeed two sides of the climate change debate, and if you fail to recognize that, then it is you who has his head in the ground.
The Mann Hockey stick graph has been thoroughly discredited for its manipulation of data.
...temperatures decreased since 1998?
There is not two sides of the credible climate debate. There is the science and there internet lunatics. Guess which side you are on.
You make two very serious claims in this post. Both of which are undeniably false. Let's examine the first claim:
"The Mann Hockey stick graph has been thoroughly discredited for its manipulation of data."
As an objective observer, one must ask is this indeed true?
The first order of business here is to correct the mischaracterization of this single paleoclimate study as the "foundation" of global warming theory.
The "Hockey Stick" graph was featured prominently in the IPCC TAR Summary for Policymakers. It has been reviewed time and time again.
It was important in that it cast serious doubt on the notion both of a global Medieval Warm Period warmer than the 20th century and of a global Little Ice Age, both long-time (cautiously) accepted features of the last 1,000 years of climate history. It seems these periods
were regional, not globally synchronized -- though the LIA seems to have been more widely experienced.
Paleoclimate evidence is simply one in a number of independent lines of evidence indicating the strong likelihood that human influences on climate play a dominant role in the observed 20th century warming of the earth's surface.
Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence in support of this conclusion is the evidence from so-called "Detection and Attribution Studies".
Such studies demonstrate that the pattern of 20th century climate change closely matches that predicted by state-of-the-art models of the climate system in response to 20th century anthropogenic forcing (due to the combined influence of anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations and industrial aerosol increases).
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/440.htm
Another thing. False claims of the existence of errors in the Mann reconstruction were traced to spurious allegations made by two Canadian individuals, McIntyre and McKitrick. McIntyre works in the mining industry, while McKitrick is an economist. It's a good thing they're 'experts' huh?
By the way, the false claims were first made in an article (McIntyre and McKitrick, 2003) published in a non-scientific social science journal named "Energy and Environment."
It was rejected by Nature based on negative appraisals by reviewers and editor.
So, the Mann hockey stick was never, has never been debunked. And it certainly was not discredited by a study conducted by a 'miner' and an 'economist' and published in a social science journal.
Furthermore, the claims of McIntyre and McKitrick were totally discredited in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Look it up yourself. The paper was published in the American Meteorological Society journal, "Journal of Climate" by Rutherford and colleagues (2004)
Try actually knowing what you're talking about before you make outrageous claims based on non-scientific, non-peer reviewed studies published in social science journals.
Your words: "No papers - I repeat - no peer-reviewed papers published in scientific academic journals arguing against Anthropogenic global warming exist.". This claim is completely abusrd....nice try though.
