A completely independent panel of research scientists from related fields was assembled to collect and analyze global temperature data to check on the pros and cons of global climate change. What do you suppose they found when they checked NASA’s results?

What came out was a graph remarkably similar to those produced by the world’s three most important and established groups whose work had been decried as unreliable and shoddy in climate sceptic circles.

It’s a match! Of course this will get little press. But imagine if there had been any divergence for any reason whatsoever. It would have been a good old-fashioned right-wing freak-out jamboree.

My friend Michael Mann notes in his response to the study that these findings specifically undercut the claims of apologists like Anthony Watts. Watts runs one of the leading climate denialist sites on the web today, Watts Up With That, and has repeatedly promoted the now falsified idea that heat from urban regions was not taken into account by climate researchers. In other words his speil seems to be researchers either “forgot” — or are so silly they thoughtlessly put — the thermometers at thousands of global weather stations too close to industrial heat sources like heat pump exhaust outlets.

And there’s many other climate skeptics, inevitably they seem to either finally repent in the face of overwhelming data or double down and go for the gold. For example the Anthony Watts’ of the world would have us believe scientists in dozens of countries are faking warming data in some vague international conspiracy to keep that sweet grant money trickling in. Presumably, this happens even as money geysers funded by industry think-tanks spray cash all over anyone willing to trade their scientific integrity for an easy buck — Off Sarcasm.