Ignore the models behind the curtain
Global climate warming change reaches new levels of hysteria on ABC:
We really have less than a decade to start getting this right. If we’re still dragging our feet in 2015 I think it really becomes at that point almost impossible for the world to avert a degree of climate change that we simply will not be able to manage without intolerable cost and consequences.
So says climatologist John Holdrens. Fortunately, we don’t have to take his word for it anymore. The science (based entirely on predictive models) has been around long enough we can see long term trends and how they compare to those predictions.
Here’s a graph of actual warming in the atmosphere compared to predictions.
And, as well all know now, the temperature has been flat to declining over the last decade and the oceans have cooled. It’s gotten to the point that even advocates of the science have predicted we are on a decade or longer “hiatus” from the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.
It’s not surprising that, as more and more evidence the models are wrong, wrong, wrong, piles up, the rhetoric reaches a fever pitch. For Holdrens and so many others, the desire to “address” climate change now is more important than ever, before the entire theory becomes laughing stock.
UPDATE: Newtbuster, in comments, suggests The New Zealand Centre for Political Research is a schill for Exxon. Unfortunately no evidence the atmospheric warming graph is inaccurate was presented. Since funding for global warming study (both sides) comes from many, many places, I prefer to stick to the evidence itself, and welcome any dispute of it.
Newtbuster adds: “You indicated on this blog that all of your “facts”
Do some research on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (think of a long-lived, super-sized La Nina). It just flipped to a cool phase, and the phases can last 40 years.
During a cool phase we often get the kind of weather we are seeing this spring. The last time we were in a PDO cool phase was the 1970’s (remember- back when we were warned of an impending ice age!)
The cool PDO is saving on my my summer cooling bill, but I’m afraid of what it will do to my heat bill this January.
My prediction: while Global Cooling continues, A. Gore will simply say something akin to “Imagine how bad Global Warming will be once the cooling phase switches. We must be prepared!” Implicit in that argument, however, is the acknowledgement that the globe goes through natural warming and cooling phases, and the irony will go mostly un-noticed; or at least un-acknowledged.
Alarmingly, we are also seeing hints that we might be in a Solar Minimum (extended period of low/no solar flares, or sun spots). This would greatly exacerbate any cooling trend. The last time we had a Solar Minimum we had the mini ice age. If Global Cooling continues, we could have serious agricultural challenges. But hey, let’s keep turning our food into gas (I digress)…
Here’s to hoping we do not have global cooling!
Point #1 — after following your links…first to Powerline (a right wing blog), which linked to “The New Zealand Center for Political Research” (Political research?), and then their link to SEPP — a division of Heartland Institute (which, guess what?, is funded by Exxon Mobil).
Point #2, If you actually read the NPR story on the oceans cooling you would realize that the ocean cooling issue is mysterious because cooling should cause contraction of the water molecules and yet the ocean levels are still rising. Some of the rise can be explained by melting in Greenland and the artic, but not all of it…and the scientists are continuing to question the data. They don’t deny data as the Heartland Institute does, but they point out the need for furthur study. You indicated on this blog that all of your “facts” are based on newspaper sources. Obviously that is incorrect.