On Hiatus

Friday 28 October 2011 - Filed under Uncategorized

Apparently, the party line on Anthropogenic Global Warming is that it’s currently on hiatus. Paul Voosen in Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming:

Barnes had uncovered a piece of a puzzle that has provoked, frustrated and focused climate scientists over the past half decade. It is a mystery that has given cover to forces arrayed against the reality of human-driven global warming. And it is a question that can be easily stated: Why, despite steadily accumulating greenhouse gases, did the rise of the planet’s temperature stall for the past decade?

“If you look at the last decade of global temperature, it’s not increasing,” Barnes said. “There’s a lot of scatter to it. But the [climate] models go up. And that has to be explained. Why didn’t we warm up?”

The question itself, while simple sounding, is loaded. By any measure, the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest in modern history. However, 1998 remains the single warmest year on record, though by some accounts last year tied its heat. Temperatures following 1998 stayed relatively flat for 10 years, with the heat in 2008 about equaling temperatures at the decade’s start. The warming, as scientists say, went on “hiatus.”

The hiatus was not unexpected. Variability in the climate can suppress rising temperatures temporarily, though before this decade scientists were uncertain how long such pauses could last. In any case, one decade is not long enough to say anything about human effects on climate; as one forthcoming paper lays out, 17 years is required.

Hiatus? Really? This entire article can be boiled down to “Global temperatures have not performed according to what our models have predicted; something is clearly wrong with the earth.”

Keep moving those goalposts, scientists. It only lends you more credibility.

Indeed, many of the scientists sorting out the warming hiatus disagree with one another — in a chummy, scholarly way. Judith Lean, the solar scientist, finds Kaufmann’s work unpersuasive and unnecessarily critical of China. Kaufmann finds Solomon’s stratosphere studies lacking in evidence. Hansen and Trenberth can’t agree on a budget.

It seems staggering, then, that in a few years’ time a new consensus will form for the next U.N. climate change report. But it will, and lurking beneath it will remain, as always, the churning theories and rivalries, the questions, the grist of scientific life.

Gee, what happened to the scientific consensus global warming cultists keep telling me about? It’s funny that the only time a true consensus is claimed is when policymakers are trying to figure out just how to change the world economy.

2011-10-28  »  madlibertarianguy