The White House recently "eviscerated" a CDC report on the health effects of global warming. This sort of thing has happened so much that I have a hard time getting upset about it now. It's more like I'm shocked when they don't use government scientists to further their own agendas.

Anyway, I came across a followup: White House Defends Editing of Climate Testimony, which I just had to read. I love torturing myself by reading the administration's tortured reasoning. The story is mostly the usual crap you'd expect from a White House/Fox mashup, but I thought the ending was a little odd:

Steve Milloy, founder of Junk Science.com, said he's happy to hear the White House stepped in before her original testimony could be shared.

"The federal government is chock full of climate-change alarmists and [Gerberding] is going along with it because she doesn't know any better," said Milloy, a leading climate-change skeptic.

He said Gerberding's testimony, in full, would have been seized upon by what he deems "alarmists."

"It accomplishes nothing," said Milloy.

What? Who the hell is this guy? Why are they devoting such a large space in the article to this person while providing absolutely no credentials? I had to click the link and boy was it enlightening. First, from the about page we find that he is a web site founder, investment adviser and Fox News columnist. Ah, now I see...

Further on down we learn that he has questionable science credentials with a "B.A. in Natural Sciences from the Johns Hopkins University, a Master of Health Sciences in Biostatistics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health". He has in addition no articles published in any peer-reviewed journals, though quite a few in not peer-reviewed journals.

The truly amusing thing about the site is the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge. On its surface it seems like a fine idea. All one would have to do is submit any of several reports, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Report and cash a fat check for $125,000. However, Mr. Milloy, with his complete misunderstanding of the scientific method has framed the challenge in such a way that he will not ever have to admit when someone has shown proof of human-caused, hamrful global warming.

The essence of the challenge is that you must disprove two hypotheses:

1. Manmade emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling
2. The benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.

The first is a red herring. It is established fact that greenhouse gases warm the planet. It's why Earth is livable. It's why Venus is horribly hot. It's why Mars is so cold, despite being not much farther from the Sun. It's also established fact, not to mention logically obvious that the greenhouse effect caused by these gases increases as you increase the amount of them in the atmosphere. Ergo, as long as humans are significantly increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, humans are causing noticable temperature change.

The second is where he guarantees you'll never get his money. He first wants scientists to determine the effects of global warming until 2100, a difficult enough task, but further wants this report to consider "all global social, economic and environmental effects," as if those could ever be determined scientifically. It's an absurdly impossible task, especially since the rules require you to submit to junkscience.com's judgement as to what the terms of the hypotheses mean. Thus, if you leave out even one possible side effect of global warming, he can deny you your money.

Then there's the kicker where you find out why no one has submitted an entry for the challenge: "All entries must represent the original work of an entrant that has been produced specifically for the UGWC." They're asking for a highly detailed scientific argument with the cards stacked against them, and you have to make the entry just for them? Who in their right mind would do that?