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Here's a New Scientist editorial pointing out the absurdity of Dr. S Fred Singer and Dennis Avery's recent PR campaign attacking the science of global warming.

It's behind a pay-per-view wall, so I've pulled a few quotes for those who don't have access to the whole article:

We need climate change sceptics. Not because they are right - at least not on the big issue of human culpability in recent warming - but because they ask hard questions that lead to deeper knowledge. What we do not need from them is misrepresentation and cynical trashing of scientists' work."

Once research findings are published they, of course, become public property, available to be contested and reinterpreted by all. But researchers do have a right not to be blatantly misrepresented. Sadly, the spin doctors of climate scepticism have a history of mangling research and traducing the integrity of climate scientists."

Another absurd recent claim attributed to Singer is that "the widely touted 'consensus' of 2500 scientists on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an illusion: most of the panelists have no scientific qualifications". This stuff is bad not only for science, but also for the sceptical cause. No one wants to silence sceptics: we need scepticism. We just wish they were better at it."