So, man-made Global Warming is over. It's official.
Well, the bloke who was at the forefront of the man-made Global Warming religion and invented the enormously popular Gaia Theory (that the Earth either is, or functions like, a single living entity) has now said he was wrong, and you can't get much more official than that, can you?
James Lovelock predicted in 2007 that “billions of us will die; the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic”. He thought that humans were too stupid to prevent global warming, and urged 'putting democracy on hold for a while' to battle climate change.
Now he whistles in an entirely different key. He admits “I was alarmist about climate change; so was Gore. The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books, mine included, because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time ... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising”.
He points to Gore's “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery's “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future. Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock said “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I'm not a denier.” He said human-caused carbon dioxide emissions were driving an increase in the global temperature, but added that the effect of the oceans was not well enough understood and could have a key role. “It (the sea) could make all the difference between a hot age and an ice age,” he said.
He did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake,” but suggested that a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding.
The influential website Climate Depot began reporting on Lovelock's conversion away from climate fears as early as 2010 when he began reconsidering the alleged 'settled science' and said that man-made carbon emissions might have “saved us from a new ice age”. He also tackled people's attitudes to the subject and admitted “I hate all this business about feeling guilty about what we're doing. We're not guilty.”
The perfidy and incompetence of other scientists affected his views deeply. “We haven't learned the lessons of the ozone-hole debate ... the corruption of science in that was so bad ... something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked or incompetently done ... the great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. The peer-review process can be exceedingly prejudiced and exert censorship, even.”
The Climategate scandal at the University of East Anglia left him feeling “utterly disgusted ... fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science”.
In one way we should not be surprised at this change of heart. The seeds of his conversion were present in the original Gaia theory, which holds that the earth is capable of curing itself. “A planet that is effectively alive can regulate itself and its composition and climate,” he wrote. He now believes that “We haven't got the physics worked out yet ... I think the public are right. That's why I'm soft on the sceptics. Science has got overblown. The sceptics kept us sane ... they have kept us from regarding climate science as a religion. It had gone too far that way”.
Well, hoo-bloody-ray. Better late than never, we suppose.
The end of the AGW hoax is also signalled by an influential German paper, as reported this week on No Tricks Zone.com (“not here to worship what is known, but to question it”) ...
Der Spiegel has finally gotten around to conceding that global warming has ended, at least for the time being.
Yesterday Spiegel science journalist Axel Bojanowski published a piece “Climate change: scientists baffled by the stop in global warming”.
We’ve been waiting for this admission a long time, and watching the media reaction is interesting to say the least. Bojanowski writes that “The word has been out for quite some time now that the climate is developing differently than predicted earlier”. He poses the question: “How many more years of stagnation are needed before scientists rethink their predictions of future warming?”
Bojanowski adds “15 years without warming are now behind us. The stagnation of global near-surface average temperatures shows that the uncertainties in the climate prognoses are surprisingly large. The public is now waiting with suspense to see if the next UN IPCC report, due in September, is going to discuss the warming stop.”
The big question now circulating through the stunned European media, governments and activist organisations is how could the warming stop have happened? Moreover, how do we now explain it to the public?
To find an answer, Bojanowski contacted a number of sources. The result, in summary: scientists are now left only to speculate over an entire range of possible causes. Uncertainty in climate science indeed has never been greater. It’s back to square one.
One explanation Spiegel presents is that the oceans have somehow absorbed the heat and are now hiding it somewhere. Yet, Bojanowski writes that there is very little available data to base this on: “There is a lot of uncertainty concerning the development of the water temperature. It has long appeared that also the oceans have not warmed further since 2003.” Spiegel then quotes Kevin Trenberth concerning NASA’s claim that they’ve detected a warming of the oceans: “The uncertainties with the data are too great. We need to improve our measurements“.
Spiegel also writes that the missing heat may be lurking somewhere deep in the oceans. But here Bojanowski [Spiegel] quotes Doug Smith of the Met Office: “This is very difficult to confirm“. Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI) suspects that energy has been conveyed to the ocean’s interior, but there’s a dire lack of data to confirm this. Bojanowski writes over the current state of ocean data measurement: “Without intensifying the data measurement network, we are going to have to wait a long time for any proof“.
Scientists also suspect that the stratosphere may have something to do with the recent global temperature stall. Susan Solomon says the stratosphere has gotten considerably drier, and so warming at the surface may have been reduced by a quarter. But Bojanowski reminds us that under the bottom line, the scientists are pretty much without a clue.”
Well then, maybe it’s due to aerosols from China and India blocking out the sun, some scientists are speculating, and ”thus weakening warming by one third“. Spiegel writes that “If the air were cleaner, then climate warming would accelerate.” But aerosols have always been a convenient joker in climate models to explain unexpected cooling, such as from 1945 to 1980.
In fact, all the explanations presented by Bojanowski above have already been thoroughly looked at in a book- one year ago – by a pair of scientists: Prof.Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr.Sebastian Lüning. Last year much of the media massively ostracised them for floating “crude theories”. A year later it’s indeed strange to see that their “crude theories” are now completely in vogue. How does Bojanowski sum it up? “The numerous possible explanations do show just how imprecisely climate is understood.” Trenberth is left with only anecdotes, isolated singular events.
Yet, as Bojanowski points out, some scientists refuse to give up on the AGW theory. He writes: “Under the bottom line, there are a number of various ominous signs of warming: rising sea levels, Arctic sea ice reduced by a half in the summertime, melting glaciers. At some locations there are signs that extreme weather events are increasing.”
“There are many signs of global warming,” emphasizes Kevon Trenberth, “near surface air temperatures is only one of them.”
Sorry, but isolated singular events do not constitute trends, let alone science. Prof. Trenberth really ought to know that. This is pathetic. The observed data and measured trends have stopped showing global warming. So are scientists now claiming that singular events are robust signs? This would be only one step away from astrology!
Bojanowski reminds us again that the science is poorly understood and that a number of factors are at play. He writes: “Indeed new surprising data keep popping up. Recently a new study appeared showing that soot particles from unfiltered diesel engine exhaust and open fires have had an impact on warming that is twice as high as what was first thought.”
Bojanowski also tells his readers that “Computer simulations have shown that warming has made tropical storms more seldom.” He mentions other factors that are poorly understood, such as solar radiation’s impact on clouds, water vapour cycles, and natural and man-made aerosols.
Spiegel at the end of the article seems to be duped into thinking that short-term prognoses are uncertain, but longterm ones are rather sure. Spiegel quotes warmist Jochem Marotzke of the MPI: “Climate prognoses over time periods of a few years still remain especially uncertain. Our forecasting system in this regard still lets us down but we’re still working on it.”
This to me appears to be an attempt to have readers believe that although they’ve botched the short-term projections completely, they are likely still right about the longterm projections of warming. Now take five minutes to get your laughing under control. If the models failed for the first 15 years, then they are no good, period! They’re crap, and you cannot rely on them for projecting the long-term. They belong in one place only: the dustbin. How long must we wait before climate scientists return to science?
Don’t get me wrong, at least this article, admitting something is terribly amiss, is a very encouraging step in the right direction. But it’s difficult to remain hopeful when climate scientists continue demonstrating that they do not even know what proper scientific methodology is.
Lastly, I like they way Bojanowski ends his piece: “Current prognoses warn of a 5°C warming if CO2 emissions continue as before. But it is not now well-known just how much natural climate impacts are able to change the temperature development – the new NASA data have revealed this as well.”
Spiegel science writers would be well-advised to read Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s “Die kalte Sonne“. Practically every question brought up by Bojanowski has been answered there – one year ago. Moreover, Lüning”s and Vahrenholt’s temperature model for the next 100 years so far has been dead on.
A visitor to No Tricks Zone.com points out that “the Bojanowski article is significant – Der Spiegel sells 1 million printed units in Germany and is the Bible of the atheist left, together with Spiegel Online. Most engineers read it at work. It gives them the feeling of being informed.
Bojanowski and Fleischhauer are the two honest persons working at Der Spiegel. Most climate alarmist articles in Der Spiegel were not by Bojanowski; when they toss a theme to Bojanowski it means they’re done with politically exploiting it; Bojanowski is the guy at Der Spiegel who knows the scientific method.”
Well, if that's true, he's one step ahead of many scientists! A scientist told The GOS recently that scientific method depends on proof. You invent a hypothesis that meets the facts as you know them, and then you try to prove that it's true. If you can't prove it, it's not true.
That sounds simple, and perfectly logical. It's also the complete opposite of the way many scientists and environmentalists have approached the issue of climate change. They've predicted what was going to happen on the basis of computer models which are only as accurate as the data that's fed into them and the parameters within which they are designed. They've pointed to isolated events and extrapolated to the general – one glacier is melting so they're all melting, one cat has no tail so no cats have tails and so on.
And they've carefully ignored any fact that might disprove their theories – for instance, when have you heard a scientist admit that in the 1930s the Arctic was warmer and less ice-bound than it is now? That's right, you haven't. If it don't fit the theory, it can't be true.
As our old Dad used to say, “my mind is made up: don't confuse me with facts!”
Just one more thing and then we'll shut up about it: did you notice the bit about the heat having gone into the heart of the oceans? I think we've heard it all now. "No, no, Global Warming isn't over - it's hiding!"
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2013 The GOS