Thursday, May 01, 2008
AGW, not: No more warming until 2015
Suddenly climate researchers are predicting that despite ever-rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide the planet's climate will cool, not warm, for the next seven or eight years. This prediction reverses the judgment of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which forecast less than 18 months ago that temperatures would continue to rise in the next decade. Of course, the scientists now predicting global cooling hasten to add that their new forecasts do not impeach the science supporting AGW:
The authors stressed that the pause in warming represented only a temporary blunting of the centuries of rising temperatures that scientists have projected if carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases continue accumulating in the atmosphere.
“We’re learning that internal climate variability is important and can mask the effects of human-induced global change,” said the paper’s lead author, Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany. “In the end this gives more confidence in the long-term projections.”
Science this may be, or perhaps it is preparation of the media battlespace. After all, if global temperatures extend the cooling trend in place since 2002 until 2015, there will be very few ordinary citizens who believe that they have to sacrifice their standard of living and that of their children to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 20% of current levels. It will be very important for the activists to say that the "accepted" models predicted this extended cooling period as part of the broader scientific case for AGW. Never mind that other such models predicted just the opposite only 18 months ago.
If you find mass consumption market capitalism aesthetically offensive, it is much easier to believe that economic activity is destroying the planet than not believe it, Occam's Razor notwithstanding.
12 Comments:
By 
Andrew X, at
Fri May 02, 12:09:00 AM:
I'm remninded of a great rule of thumb.
Beware any "crisis" whose proclaimers tell you the answer is to do... exactly what they have been advocating all along.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri May 02, 01:34:00 AM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri May 02, 01:38:00 AM:
This comment has been removed by the author.
By 
, at
Fri May 02, 01:56:00 AM:
At least they are acknowledging a "pause" in the warming instead of covering it up. Of course, the fall of the Soviet Union was a "pause" for world communism. The DC Madam has "paused" metabolizing.
By D.E. Cloutier, at
Fri May 02, 02:25:00 AM:
Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times on March 12, 2005:
"The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they've lost credibility with the public..."
He adds: "...I was once an environmental groupie, and I still share the movement's broad aims, but I'm now skeptical of the movement's 'I Have a Nightmare' speeches.
"In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled.
"When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks...
"This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths."
Link:
"I Have a Nightmare"
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/opinion/12kristof.html
By davod, at
Fri May 02, 07:24:00 AM:
You guys are so silly!
First we read that the average world temperature has not risen for ten years (Even though CO2 is still rising).
Now we get the reasons the temperature did not rise and will rise later. Lets see the evidence. Maybe they just turned the hockeystick around to far.
By , at
Fri May 02, 10:50:00 AM:
Hedgin their bets...
They've already got the all-purpose bogeyman of "climate change" lined up anyway.
By , at
Fri May 02, 04:01:00 PM:
Environmentalism as religion, not as science. I was an eco-freak 40 years ago, courtesy of parents w graduate degrees in it. While I am open to the possibility of anthropogenic global warming,as many have pointed out, the jury is still out on the issue. The global cooling scare of three decades ago, along with the many inaccurate predictions of Paul Erlich and the like, give one cause for skepticism.
The passion of many of the climate change people is exceeded only by their ignorance of science and how scientific matters are decided. Hint: they are not decided by a poll of a TV audience.
By joated, at
Fri May 02, 08:24:00 PM:
1971 I got a BS in environmental Science and followed that up with an MS in ES/Ecology. I was hot to trot for Earth Day and the whole sheebang. But one day, somewhere in the mid to late '80s, the scales fell from my eyes and low, I saw that the vast majority of what the ecomovemnet was pitching was about as far from the svcience methodology I had learned as to be indistinguishable from a snake oil sales pitch. The loudest voices are the ones looking for major grants and that is all they are looking for. Truth be damned.
By Neil Benson, at
Sat May 03, 12:29:00 AM:
Global climate change as defined by Al Gore is what happens when you let a politician loose with a scientific issue. The debate is not over; it hasn't really begun. In a court trial in England the "Gorites" had to conceded that they couldn't prove 7 of their 12 points. Over 400 scientists signed a letter objecting to the lastest UN "finding." Give me a break
By , at
Sat May 03, 09:28:00 AM:
AGW alarmism is but one of the stunning examples of the loss of faith in God in today's world. Our intellectuals have become so conceited and self-worshipping that they can't see the wonder of Creation around them. The world self-regulates. It has for millennia and, it seems, always will. Drought follows rain, sun follows clouds, spring always remedies winter. Read e.e. cummings rather than Al Gore and you'll have a nicer life. You may even meet the little lame balloon man...
By Noocyte, at
Sun May 04, 03:06:00 AM:
