Back in 2007 – in a post I cannot find anymore – I suggested that the wheels were falling off the global warming bus.
The absence of warming for the past 17 years has pretty much put paid to the ideas that a) global warming is an imminent problem, b) that the models “climate science” has relied upon are anything other than bogus, c) that CO2 has a control knob function so far as temperature is concerned.
Back in 2007 if you suggested that global warming might, possibly, have an explanation other than CO2 the flying monkeys of climate change – and John Cross – would descend upon you with shrill cries of heresy and “The IPCC says”. And it is important to remember that the IPCC concluded that having looked at all the variables the only possible explanation for observed warming was the increase in CO2. To suggest the Sun or natural variability was to “deny the science”.
Which makes today’s article in Nature all the more delicious:
From the “settled science” department. It seems even Dr. Kevin Trenberth is now admitting to the cyclic influences of the AMO and PDO on global climate. Neither “carbon” nor “carbon dioxide” is mentioned in this article that cites Trenberth as saying: “The 1997 to ’98 El Niño event was a trigger for the changes in the Pacific, and I think that’s very probably the beginning of the hiatus,” watts up with that
Realistically, the warmists will try to have it both ways: CO2 will still be a warming threat but natural variability, cycles, that sort of thing, can be used to explain the “hiatus”. My ten year old can find the logical fallacy in that position.
Now, once natural variability has been admitted as even a partial explanation, the entire edifice of climate is open to question. For example: perhaps the surface temperature record has been incorrectly adjusted. Perhaps there is more to the Urban Heat Island effect than was originally supposed. Perhaps the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 is close to 1 degree per doubling than to 4.
When a theory goes wrong it goes wrong in every particular. You can’t pick and choose. If natural variability is implicated in the observed hiatus then it is also implicated in the observed warming which preceded the pause (if pause it is.) The models do not include the oceanic cycles and, if those cycles matter as Trenberth now suggests they do, the models must be junked and begun again from scratch.
Ultimately, the implication of the Nature article is that, on the evidence, the null hypotheses, namely that CO2 is not significantly responsible for increases in temperature, has survived the worst climate science can do.
The policy implications are extraordinary. Essentially, the world is spending a billion dollars a day to reduce the emission of a substance which, on the evidence, has little or nothing to do with climate change.
That should stop. Now.
Jay Currie 