Hard times in the Church of Global Warming

**Posted by Phineas

Today’s a busy day, but I wanted to share three stories that, taken together, almost make one feel sorry for those who cling bitterly to their faith in the fraud that is anthropogenic global warming …er… dangerous man-caused climate change …no, wait… extreme weather events that are really our fault whatever they want to call it, this week.

First, yet another prediction of DOOM falls flat. Among the various disasters sure to befall us as we pump CO2 (aka, “plant food”) into the atmosphere and Earth takes her revenge in the best Hollywood manner was supposed to be an increase in violent hurricanes.

There’s a small problem: it ain’t happening.

What was learned
The four researchers’ reconstructed record of intense hurricanes revealed that the frequency of these β€œhigh-magnitude” events β€œpeaked near 6 storms per century between 2800 and 2300 years ago.” Thereafter, it suggests that they were β€œrelatively rare” with β€œabout 0-3 storms per century occurring between 1900 and 1600 years ago,” after which they state that these super-storms exhibited a marked decline, which β€œbegan around 600 years ago” and has persisted through the present with β€œbelow average frequency over the last 150 years when compared to the preceding five millennia.”

What it means
It is instructive to note that over the past century and a half of ever-increasing fossil fuel utilization and atmospheric CO2 buildup, the frequency of the most intense category of hurricanes in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico has been lower than it was over the prior five millennia, which speaks volumes about the climate-alarmist claim that continued anthropogenic CO2 emissions will lead to more frequent super cyclones and hurricanes.

Dontcha just hate it when empirical evidence gets in the way of perfectly good religious dogma scientific theory? Granted, this study was only in Florida, but, also in fairness, Florida is one of the places alarmists claimed would be worst-hit by AGW-caused super-storms. Certainly, this is worth testing elsewhere to see if the results hold up.

But wait, there’s more!

Far from the Earth becoming a steam bath thanks to Man’s folly, we may well be headed toward another Little Ice Age, such as that which plagued us from the mid-17th to the mid-19th centuries, when the Hudson and the Thames would freeze-over in winter. Apparently, the sun just won’t cooperate:

Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.

Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a β€˜grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food.

Solar output goes through 11-year cycles, with high numbers of sunspots seen at their peak.

We are now at what should be the peak of what scientists call β€˜Cycle 24’ – which is why last week’s solar storm resulted in sightings of the aurora borealis further south than usual. But sunspot numbers are running at less than half those seen during cycle peaks in the 20th Century.

Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.

According to a paper issued last week by the Met Office, there is a 92 per cent chance that both Cycle 25 and those taking place in the following decades will be as weak as, or weaker than, the β€˜Dalton minimum’ of 1790 to 1830. In this period, named after the meteorologist John Dalton, average temperatures in parts of Europe fell by 2C.

However, it is also possible that the new solar energy slump could be as deep as the β€˜Maunder minimum’ (after astronomer Edward Maunder), between 1645 and 1715 in the coldest part of the β€˜Little Ice Age’ when, as well as the Thames frost fairs, the canals of Holland froze solid.

(h/t the ever-readable Delingpole)

The Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit (1), as you may know, have been two of the chief centers for climate alarmism, constantly pushing a message of impending DOOM!!, unless we all submit now to a transnational bureaucracy that will tax and control us all the way to Salvation. Naturally, since the report came from the Met, they feel obliged to explain that it really means nothing and that the power of CO2-induced warming will overwhelm the influence of the sun (2).

So, does this mean AGW is now good, since it will keep us from freezing our tootsies off? I’m so confused…

Finally, a group of 16 (real) scientists co-authored an essay in the Wall Street Journal arguing that while there is no need to panic over global warming, we should decry the corruption of science in the name of “consensus” and, yes, profit:

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promotedβ€”or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

(…)

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word “incontrovertible” from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.”

Be sure to read the whole thing.

And the next time you find yourself pitying a disconsolate global-warming cultist, forget it. Laugh and point, instead; it’s much more fun.

Footnotes:
(1) The CRU was also at the center of the Climategate and Climategate II scandals. How anyone can take them seriously after that is beyond me.
(2) Of course, this is the same crowd that claimed our children and grandchildren would not know what snow is, only to see Europe soon thereafter blanketed with record snowfalls. So we know what their predictions are worth.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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