Marked as a "fail"

Andrew Bolt (and Jennifer Marohasy, naturally) pointed people last week to a new paper, published in a proper peer reviewed journal, by AGW skeptic Bob Carter and others. It argued that (my paraphrase) ocean cycles were behind most late 20th century warming.

Given Bob Carter's reputation, I was immediately doubtful that it proved what he was indicating it did. Indeed the paper seems to have been pretty comprehensively taken down. See Real Climate (well of course, skeptics will say) but more importantly, follow the links they have that explain why the paper fails to say anything significant. The explanation is very clear, and it will be very interesting to see if Carter and his fellow authors respond at all.

It's also interesting to note that even Lucia, who is sometimes quoted by Bolt and other skeptic blogs, seems to think the paper is a non-event (or even might mean that warming is worse that we thought!) I think we can safely count it as a fail for CO2 warming skepticism, peer-reviewed or not.