That's it?

"Call to Cool the Hype" is supposed to be today's big anti-Al-Gore revelation?

The article begins with Don Easterbrook making his case that recent temperature increases aren't necessarily teh bigge57 evah. But then there's this sentence:

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

...followed by quotes from the NYT's favorite "moderates" Kevin Vranes and Roger Pielke. The majority of the rest of the article include quotes by über-skeptics Richard Lindzen, Bjorn Lomborg, Roy Spencer, Benny Peiser and Paul Reiter--most of whom by now are beginning to sound like broken records playing at hyper-speed. Unfortunately, the juxtaposition of "middle ground," "rank-and-file" and "no political axe to grind" with these names makes it seem like they're 'moderates'; and this meme has been picked up by the right-wing noise machine, along with the now-commonplace overuse of the word "inconvenient". Note to wankers: these are the same people you always quote, and they're not necessarily "moderate" in their views on global warming.

As a scientist who has watched "Inconvenient Truth" together with other scientists, I too would welcome as much accuracy as possible [yes, I mean that as a critique of Al Gore's movie]. But the fact is that Al Gore was able to bring the subject of what could happen if we don't act past the barbarians at the gate of public discourse--the ones who have used and abused what the above-mentioned 'moderates' say to drown out that message. And by doing so he helped promote the cause of accuracy more than they could ever hope to do.