Talk:Climate change skeptics/common claims and rebuttal

We were concerned about a reported misquote on this SW page as noted by Anthony Watts in a blog dated September 27, 2010 located here.

The reported misquote was, "John Cook, on his website Skeptical Science, states that 'the usual suspects in natural climate change – solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles – are all conspicuous in their absence over the past three decades of warming.' "

We investigated the charge that this was a misquote. I found John Cook's correct quote on his blog, as follows:

"'In fact, all the usual suspects in natural climate change - volcanic activity, orbit wobbles, solar variations are conspicuous in their absence over the past 30 years of long term global warming.'"

It is indeed different phrasing than that posted by Anthony Watts. Cook's original blog, which presumably contained this quote, is undated, but he last updated it on June 26, 2010, and it no longer contained the same phraseology. The original version (which we used to have on SW) might have contained the quote using the term "Milankovitch cycles."

That said, at the time I investigated the accuracy of the quote, I could not find the supposed incorrect quote anywhere on the SW page the where writer indicated he saw it, so I checked the page history and found the quote (with the phrase "Milankovitch cycles") did indeed used to be there, but was changed/deleted Sept. 28th by a user with the screen name "Skeptical Science." So John Cook himself may have gone in and changed it very recently.

Anne Landman, CMD Editor