James Taranto writes at WSJ.com:
In the first five paragraphs of a recent dispatch from Stockholm, the Associated Press–in our estimation unwittingly, for the most part–exposes the deep corruption of the “global warming” enterprise:
Scientists working on a landmark U.N. report on climate change are struggling to explain why global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising.
Leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press show there are deep concerns among governments over how to address the issue ahead of next week’s meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Climate skeptics have used the lull in surface warming since 1998 to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are cooking the planet by burning fossil fuels and cutting down CO2-absorbing forests.
The IPCC report is expected to affirm the human link with greater certainty than ever, but the panel is under pressure to also address the recent lower rate of warming, which scientists say is likely due to heat going deep into the ocean and natural climate fluctuations.
“I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying, ‘Look the IPCC is silent on this issue,’ ” said Alden Meyer, of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.
The first paragraph describes a problem: a theory that has been put to an empirical test and found wanting. In the fourth paragraph, we get a passing discussion of alternative hypotheses. But this is presented as fundamentally a problem of political communication or public relations.
Hey, stop making fun of Anthony’s dog
They’ve already handed us quite a few sticks already. lately they’ve even taken to handing the sticks to themselves….
It’s quote a conundrum they’ve got on their hands. For example, if they say that the “pause” in warming is due to natural variability then they hand skeptics a stick with which to beat them. If natural variability can hold the temperature down it can make it go up, too. How much of the warming, then, is due to natural variability? Possibly it’s most of it and CO2 levels are following temperatures.
BREAKING: The Union of Care-Free Scientists, (formerly the Union of Concerned Scientists), has issued a statement on the state of global warming science.
“We are extremely relieved to find out that the world is not going to heat up and kill billions of people in various, hideous ways. Our massive incompetence and overall inability to use the scientific method lead us to predict all sorts of nonsense that caused many of the world’s economies to take action in the form of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a problem that does not exist. (We’re really sorry about that, by the way). But we are looking on the bright side. The optimism that comes with knowing we are complete idiots is somehow refreshing and invigorating. Most of us have resolved to quit science all together and find work in other fields so we won’t be able in the future to do so much mischief. Again, we’re very sorry and hope the world will find it in their hearts to forgive us.”
-Union of Care-Free Scientists
Do you REALLY drive a 1957 Chev? Off the record, I drove a 1966 Mustang for 16 years. Knowing I might offend present day electric car aficionados, I recall that after mild internal surgery on the engine it burned rubber on kickdown in all gears (there were three of them). Of course, it was lighter than a present-day 1.2 liter Volkswagen Golf.
Conserve your Chevy, if you really have one! Days will come when it is worth the Earth when our land is filled with broken-down windmills for producing electricity for charging posts for broken-down electric cars and there lie gazillions of barrels of oil ready to use. By then scientists will anyway have come up with how to produce fuel for combustion engines without digging and drilling deep holes in the ground.
In all fairness, it’s going to be really challenging coming up with a whole new set of lies, that are just as scary, but somehow don’t contradict the old lies. I wouldn’t want that job.
Reblogged this on Mothers Against Wind Turbines and commented:
Now they have to think of new lies, and somehow tie them in so that they don’t contradict the old lies…