Sunday, December 15, 2013

Global Warming, R.I.P.

As a new Ice Age dawns on our planet, the drumbeat about global warming is beginning to die down.

Global warming alarmism has been around for a long enough time to  allow us judge some of its advocates' pseudo-scientific predictions. 

Five years ago Friday Al Gore confidently predicted that by today the polar ice cap would have melted away.

Jim Hoft has the story:

Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely ice free in five years. Gore made the prediction to a German audience in 2008. He told them that “the entire North ‘polarized’ cap will disappear in 5 years.”

Obviously, Gore knew nothing about such things, but senior scientists, who should have known better, offered similar predictions:

Mark Landsbaum writes in the OC Register:

Recall global warming hysteria’s halcyon days? Just 13 years ago, Dr. David Viner, senior scientist at Britain’s University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, confidently predicted that, within a few years, winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.”

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Obviously, he had never been to Buffalo.

American scientists were not very prescient either:

Recall James Hansen, global warming guru whose alarmist campaign was underwritten by his NASA paycheck. By the 2020s, Hansen predicted in 1986, the U.S. average annual temperature would rise 9 degrees Fahrenheit, or more, and up to 3 degrees by the 2010s.

A funny thing happened on the way to the 2010s and 2020s. It didn’t get so hot. In fact, depending on which data set you use, it probably has cooled down for 17 years.

As you know, the temperature in Antarctica just dropped to -136 Fahrenheit. It’s wasn’t much better in Celsius. Not to be outdone, the North Polar ice cap has grown by 29% this year. You remember the Polar ice cap—the one that Al Gore said would have disappeared by now.

Settled science, anyone?

Or was it just another dogmatic masquerading as science in order to dupe the gullible?




10 comments:

Unknown said...

You may find this data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (Yes, believe it or not, there is a Snow and Ice Data Center):

Artic Sea Ice News and Analysis

Looking at the "Artic Sea Ice Extent" chart, 2012 was a statistical outlier. 2013 is still within a +/- 2 standard deviation of a 1981 to 2010 average, but at the bottom of that range.

We all have to learn the hard way that statistical information is useful in letting us know what has happened, but the future is still an unknown.

The only thing that I can conclude from the data is that the Artic does have less ice than the average between 1981 and 2012, but it's still within an acceptable standard deviation of that average.

Sam L. said...

Con men, fast talkers, high binders, maybe true believers, is what those climate "scientists" are.

n.n said...

I hope you are wrong. We are unprepared to adapt to extreme cold temperatures. In particular, we don't have sufficient energy sources which can be reasonably isolated from the environment. Perhaps we will invade Mexico. Aside from the revenue schemes, and the progressive corruption they engender, global warming would be preferable.

Anonymous said...

Find out what caused the warming and why it stopped at http://agwunveiled.blogspot.com/

Ares Olympus said...

You can cherry-pick bad quotes and contemplate their context, or you can be contemptuous and believe what you already decided you want to hear. Weather isn't climate, and one-time experiments of CO2 dumping are expensive to reverse if you're wrong. Resource depletion, and debt-based economics seem more solid threats that slow motion disaster of climate change, but in either threat, betting on necessity to solve all problems in the future is what we're all doing, left or right.

Here's another "expert opinion" in need of some "expert deniers".
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/global-warming-since-1997-underestimated-by-half/

Dennis said...

There is a reason for the statement "There are statistics and then there are DAMN lies. What the GW alarmists have done is control the time periods utilized for statistical analysis so that periods that do not fit the agenda are not included. It is also why statistics are not used in courts. It is called "statistical Inference," inference emphasize, and not statistical fact for a reason.
I used to belong to the Sierra Club and a number of environmental groups when I was younger. I am still a Conservationist. That being said one of the things that I began to notice is how corrupt a lot of these groups became and the more lawyer oriented they became. Follow the money and one begins to see a pattern. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/the-environmental-movement-how-corrupt-is-it.php
Suffice it to say there are a large number of factors that affect both weather and climate change which have absolutely nothing to do with human beings. Besides apogees and perigees there are aphelions and perihelions which have variations. The Earth goes through space with a "wobble" that also affects the angle of the Sun and its affects. Then there is an 11 year cycle and a 42 years cycle that involved.
A question. If man can affect weather and climate change can man not do just as much damage in trying to correct that supposed affect? Do we have the applicable knowledge to make those corrections. Science is, and has been, filled with people who deny what conventional thought has been.
God save us from experts. Experts are what have gotten us into the vast majority of problems we deal with today. Anyone who would allow themselves to be called an expert is either a fool or a liar or both. If we lived with perfect knowledge then that term might apply. History is replete with "experts" who were wrong.
There was a time I was referred to as an "expert" and I hated the term for lord knows I still have a lot to learn. The essence of wisdom is realizing that one knows so very little about all there is to know.
A quotation by Franz Kafka, "Anyone who keeps the ability to see the beauty in every age of life really never grows old. One of the beauties of life is that we still have so much to learn.

Sam L. said...

Cherry picking was one of the Warmenists' favorite tactics, and likely still is.

Dennis said...

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/is-a-big-chill-on-the-way.php

There was a time a little over 36 plus years where all one read or heard was about global cooling and man being the cause. When that seem to not be supported by the data then global warming was the major problem again caused by man. When the data did not support that then we conveniently found global climate change which was of course the fault of man.
I fully expect now to see the cycle repeat itself again with global cooling taking the place of the desire to blame man for it again.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...


Check out the latest cooling-is warming gambit in today's mainstream press: it's all the fault of an impaired "polar vortex." And what or rather who impaired it? We did, of course!