Man-made global warming a science built on sand
Richard Treadgold | April 4, 2010
It seems urgent to directly attack the lack of evidence for dangerous AGW. Adaptation should be a no-brainer driver of public policy, but since the Greens stand in the way of that, shouting stridently instead for the nonsensical reduction in our emissions of harmless greenhouse gases, based on the falsehood of sinful human interference in the climate, they should be taken on by courageous politicians and electors alike. I note that some time ago Greenpeace took the cowardly decision to simply fail to respond to anyone questioning the causes of global warming, saying the matter was now decided.
They and the rest must be somehow winkled out of their holes to confront the obvious and lamentable lack of evidence, much as NIWA has recently been forced into admitting some shortcomings. They have been forced, it must be said, by nothing more than simple, truthful but persistent questions; we must take note, I think, that fulmination and excessive emotional or moral force has been absent, with the single exception of the emotional goading in Are We Feeling Warmer Yet that got them off their backsides to start with. Only a guilty conscience would have responded like that to that paper.
Or is that naive? Are plenty of people attacking the scientific evidence line already without success? I’ve been concentrating on local NIWAgate matters for a while and recently taking a break to recharge. Perhaps I’m out of touch.
There’s no sign of surrender from any significant bastion among the warmists, yet we know their fight is founded on sand. What are we going to do about it?
NIWAgate is nearly dealt with and another temperature time series will soon be produced or be newly in production, the ETS will be abandoned and the populace will soon turn gratefully back to real life, so it is time we raised the central issue of the science to centre stage.
For I foresee that global warming’s false science and fears will survive, fomenting inane distractions from genuine problems for a long time. The AGW gravy-train is already disconnected from reality; why should we expect that actually proving the disconnection will make any difference? We can expect years yet of wind, solar and tidal power schemes, a continuing fight to force all manner of things to emit less GHG and a constant effort to reduce everyone’s carbon footprint. These things have attained a truly frightening critical mass and will be with us for a while even when their underpinnings are gone. Only a few of the projects are justified by good reasons yet it will be generations before “carbon” becomes, in the mind of the common people, harmless.
At the moment the fight against our ETS is based on poor climate records, economics, the harm to farming and perhaps a sense of equity, and the fight for our ETS is based more on the perceptions of our trading partners than the (false) science directly. But as soon as we can we should shift camp nearer the enemy’s castle of fraudulent science. Set our siege machines hurling missiles against the very gates. Demolish those pretentious portals.
This cannot fail. The truth always wins. What fun.
Most of the matters you mention are mere tactics employed by the Great Government Clobbering Machine, energised by emvironmental activists amd enraged by its ongoing inability to persuade the voters that climate change is a Bad Thing.
But the key thing is very simple and factual. Is the world warming badly and, if so, who dunnit? There’s been no significant warming in the last 15 years – despite big increases in GHGs.So, unless some warming should turn up, I’d say the argument is about over.
The whole anxiety attack has been based on a oncer – in 1976-98 the trend was 0.16C/decade, when it was expected to be no more than 0.11C/decade. So we have a casus belli based on five-hundredths of a degree per decade. Hey, that’s ONE-THOUSANDTH of a degree per annum. Way within the margins of error. About equal to zero – given that all the measurements in this game are real rough, and most of the data has been tortured endlessly.
And that’s the evidence. There’s nothing else.
Yes, succinctly put. I haven’t checked the figures you mention but I presume they relate to the globe, they seem too high for NZ. Is that right?
But OK, say “that’s the evidence” – but it’s evidence of warming. What reason requires is evidence of the warming’s cause. That is too often left out, yet implied, and too many accept that human activity causes warming. It’s very simply done, these days – all you have to do is mention “climate change” and most people assume they’re being criticised even with no offer of evidence.
Sinister, really, the degree to which the environmentalist movement and their giant funding resources have achieved this.
We must resist, but our resources are small so it could take some time. Sadly, truth has nothing to do with it, but the fact remains that there is no evidence of a human cause of dangerous global warming in the past, the present or the future.
The figures are global and come from a recent BBC interview of Dr Phil Jones. He said that the global warming rate of 0.16C/decade exceeded the rate which could be explained by internal natural variability. Therefore the difference (which is 0.05C/decade) must be caused by some external forcing – which could be either natural or human. Because nobody has proved it was any particular natural cause, we can go to the default option and call it human. Of course, it’s all very uncertain, but we should observe the precautionary principle and pay an insurance premium just in case.
The prosecution rests its case.