OISM meets Mike Powell. OISM loses

In the comments about the Robinson gang, Mike Powell gave good linkage :

One of my local denialists [Ed: Link Rot] was waving this Robinson et al. paper around and loudly proclaiming it to be ironclad proof that global warming is a hoax. I spent a couple weekends pulling up the primary literature that Robinson et al. refers to and then picking their paper apart paragraph by paragraph. I made it through about the first 4 pages before I just couldn't take it any more. If anyone's interested, my point-by-point "analysis" is here:

UPDATE: Mike's analysis has moved to an honored place at Rabett Run, The Tri-City Herald links have rotted.

These are the most complete set of comments about this denialist fig leaf that Eli has seen. To give you a taste, and perhaps some motivation let me quote a part of his analysis of Page 1

1. first page, 2nd paragraph. “When we reviewed this subject in 1998 (1, 2), existing satellite records were short and were centered on a period of changing intermediate temperature trends.” It’s not entirely clear what they mean by “changing intermediate temperature trends, but it’s worth noting that their previous paper devotes a considerable amount of attention to the old Spencer and Christy MSU data that did not show a warming trend (e.g., Figures 6 through 8 in that paper). Now that some errors in the Spencer/Christy analysis have been fixed, the satellite data *does* show warming. It appears as though the Robinson et al. (2007) appeal to “changing intermediate temperature trends" is an attempt to avoid direct mention of the fact that one of the principal arguments they made in 1998 has since proved to be false. . . . . .

4. first page, 5th paragraph and Figure 3. There are several problems with this graph. Why is only the Arctic temperature plotted along with total solar irradiance (TSI)? Shouldn’t the global temperature be used instead? And on what basis is the TSI scale adjusted to create the apparent match between Arctic temperatures and TSI? It appears as though the scales were adjusted “by eye” and there is not a physical basis for selection of the axis scales. . .

Also, again we have “hydrocarbon use” plotted rather than cumulative carbon emissions. Finally, note that TSI data after the year 2000 are not included. Perhaps this is because the TSI went down while Arctic temperatures continued to increase. Basically there’s been no secular change in TSI since 1980, but global temperatures have risen significantly.

Also, the source of the TSI data is apparently one of the authors (Soon) rather than one of the more widely accepted TSI reconstructions. See Figure 2.17 in the IPCC WG1, which provides the TSI reconstructions of Lean (2000) and Wang et al. (2005). These more accepted reconstructions show considerably less 20th century variation than does Soon’s reconstruction.

Young bunnies need this to protect themselves against Robinsons begging for signatures on the street corner. Of course, Mike has challenged us to read past page 4. . . . .