It's Still Cold Out

Last post I complained about the mainstream media and their biased coverage of global warming. While this is a concern, the real problem is the people who are feeding biased information to the media.

Before James Hanson introduced the idea of greenhouse gases and global warming, major terrestrial climate events were ascribed to a complicated series of external events. These included irregularities in the earth's orbit, a minor wobble on the earth's axis, and long term shifts of ocean currents. These were carefully plotted out and considered sufficient explanation for ice ages and warm periods.

The greenhouse gases reached the public consciousness. Many climatologists now consider greenhouse gases the only driver of climate. Al Gore (not a real scientist but he plays one in documentaries) is one of these. Another is the web site Realclimate which Gore recommends.

So here's the thing, temperatures peaked a decade ago and declined a tiny bit over the last decade then dropped over the last year. See here.

The global warming alarmist had an explanation for why the temperature seemed to plateau. They simply said that the oceans were absorbing the extra heat but would soon fill up and catastrophic warming would start in again. This may explain the last decade but there is no way that they can explain the last year.

At one point in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore shows a graph of CO2 emissions and a graph of temperatures. It would appear that one causes the other. RealClimate has reduced the argument similarly. Months ago they said that even if their models were wrong, global warming must be happening. Just look at events like melting glaciers and the polar ice cap.

CO2 emissions have not declined a bit. They have increased although the rate of increase has been slowed a bit.

If you believe that the only driving force in climate is greenhouse gases then the world temperature has to have increased, or at least stayed steady. There is no room in this over-simplification for a cooling earth.

So what do they have to say about the current cooling? Nothing. RealClimate is silent on the subject. The closest that they come is to acknowledge that the Antarctica has cooled. They then go on to dismiss this since Antarctica "is covered with a gazillion tons of ice".

This is what upsets me. They don't admit that there might be a problem with their models, even when it slaps them in the face. What if the cooling phase continues? Will they ever admit it?

This is where global warming starts looking like a religion. Everything is taken on faith instead of testable truth.

In science a theory is supposed to include a prediction that says if one thing happens then the theory is true but if it fails then the theory is wrong. That has happened. Even if the world resumes warming again, the current down-tick is not in the models so better models are needed.

In the meantime, can we start building power plants and stop putting food in our gas tanks?