The Daily Caller is having quite the week of journalism.

Their newest descent into failure comes courtesy of one Anthony Watts, who claims to have proven conclusively that Al Gore “doctored a video that's supposed to prove his global warming theories.” Here is the video, from Current TV, in which Bill Nye walks us through a simple experiment demonstrating the warming effects of carbon dioxide:

The experiment involves getting two jars, putting a thermometer in both, filling one with carbon dioxide, and heating them to observe how the temperature in the CO2-filled jar rises more quickly. Here's a screengrab of a jar with a thermometer.

The video demonstrates this effect with a split-screen video of two thermometers, one of which shows temperature rising more quickly on one than the other. Again, screengrab:

Watts claims this is malicious doctoring and that “Gore's video of the 'simple experiment' to make his case on CO2 and global warming is a complete fabrication done in post-production.” After explaining how he purchased “the exact same props” to “recreate the experiment scene” and hired “a professional photographer with a top-of-the-line Canon D1 camera and Macro lens,” Watts announces quite grandly that the thermometers shown on the split-screen “were not actually in the jars during the scene.”

Of course, that conclusion is fairly obvious given that the lime-green background in the split-screen is not present in the jars. So all that money spent on props and professional photographers to prove this point was kind of a waste.

Also, it's not much of a point. Gore's people were demonstrating how to successfully conduct a simple experiment. And they dramatized the experiment's results likely because it makes for better video -- as Watts' professional photographer proved, shooting things through glass jars produces distorted images. That they didn't actually perform the experiment is moot.

And none of this says anything about the science of climate change. Carbon dioxide is a warming agent. No one really disagrees with that, and demonstrating how Gore's people edited their video does nothing to challenge that fact.

What is does do, however, is give the climate denialist set the opportinuty to croak about how Al Gore doctors videos to fake climate science, even though nothing was doctored, and the science remains solid.