When the earth
refuses to warm
By Wesley Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Global warming: Been there, done that.
Forward-looking folks are adjusting their fretting
machinery now to something called Cycle 25. Button
up your overcoats. Ice is on the way.
Global warming, which was mostly a scam invented by
researchers looking for government grants, is over.
The great warming phenomenon, which was supposed to
have sent polar bears to vacation in Miami Beach by
now, ended in 1997.
Britain’s Met Office, which tracks weather and makes
forecasts, and the University of East Anglia
Climatic Research Unit, the source of much global
warming research (some of it faked, some of it not),
agree, according to the London Daily Mail, that
Planet Earth could even be heading for an icy patch
“to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw
frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th century.”
They call this Cycle 25.
The report of the findings in Old Blighty follows an
op-ed essay in the Wall Street Journal, signed by 16
eminent scientists, including both physicists and
other climate researchers, that the panic promoted
over global warming is not now, and never has been,
shared by “large numbers of scientists, many very
prominent.”
The number of these “heretics” is growing, and “the
reason is a collection of stubborn scientific
facts.” The chief among these “stubborn scientific
facts” is that the global warming scare was bunk
from the beginning, promoted by high priests of the
great god Science, not actual scientists in pursuit
of secular knowledge. (Think Al Gore.)
“Why is there so much passion about global warming,”
these 16 eminent scientists asked, “and why has the
issue become so vexing that the American Physical
Society . . . refused the seemingly reasonable
request by so 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 of ‘cui
bono?’ Or the modern update, ‘follow the money.’”
The rising temperatures which led some researchers
to panic, like frightened teenage girls fretting
over prom dates, actually began to subside when
sunspot activity began to subside. According to this
new research, sunspot numbers are less than half of
those recorded during the cycle peaks when
scientific hysteria was at its wildest at the end of
the 20th century. The sun is moving now toward a
“grand minimum” of sunspot activity, which would
threaten cooler summers, colder winters and shorter
growing seasons. It’s all part of the natural cycle
of something the rest of us call “nature.”
Sunspots appear to be the villains. Since the sun is
beyond the control of scientists, this makes their
hair hurt and teeth itch. Scientists at the Met
Office, which concedes that global warming has
subsided, nevertheless argue still that the impact
of the sun on climate is far less than man-made
carbon dioxide (or cow-made, since bovine flatulence
has been cited as contributing to climate change).
“Our findings,” says the Met Office, “suggest [that]
a reduction of solar activity to levels not seen in
hundreds of years would be insufficient to offset
the dominant influence of greenhouse gases.”
This frustrates cooler heads in the Church of
Science. Says Henrik Svensmark, director of
Denmark’s sun-climate research: “It will take a long
battle to convince some climate scientists that the
sun is important. It may well be that the sun is
going to demonstrate this on its own, without the
need for their help.
The Met Office, like most of the global warmist
strongholds, relies on computer models for
emanations of the penumbras of doom. These models
did not foresee the pause in global warming, but the
Met insists the models are still valid. Judith Curry
of Georgia Tech, regarded as one of the most eminent
American climate scholars, finds the prediction of a
“negligible” impact of sunspot activity on climate
difficult to understand.
“The responsible thing to do would be to accept the
fact that the models may have severe shortcomings
when it comes to the influence of the sun,” she told
the Mail. She thinks it more likely that the rising
and falling of the temperature of the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans have more influence on climate than
man-made carbon dioxide.
“If we don’t see convincing evidence of global
warming by 2015,” says Benny Peiser, director of the
Global Warming Policy Foundation, “it will start to
become clear that the models are bunk.”
Heavy-breathing humans and flatulent cows will be
off the hook, and a lot of scam artists will be
pushed away from the public trough and on the street
looking for work.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.