“When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about ‘extreme weather’.”
– Matt Ridley, “Nobody Even Calls the Weather Average,” July 9, 2013.
Last summer, global warming was blamed for firefighter deaths, more thunderstorms, and poor lobster catches.
Last fall and so far this winter, the list has grown to include:
…Upon a Congressional declaration of “the public interest” and to “promote the general welfare,” the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 centralized the federal government’s energy functions. The new agency was premised on five beliefs:
DOE’s rationale of market failure and government success has flipped. Today, it is government failure and market success. Oil and gas are more abundant now than 37 years ago; oil imports are decreasing to levels thought impossible just a decade ago; politically correct renewable energy remains uneconomic (note the wind industry’s dogged pursuit of the production tax credit); and mandated conservation has present costs and speculative future benefits (hence the coercion).…
“Pauses as long as 15 years are rare in the simulations, and ‘we expect that [real-world] warming will resume in the next few years,’ the Hadley Centre group writes…. Researchers … agree that no sort of natural variability can hold off greenhouse warming much longer.”
– Richard Kerr, Science (2009)
That’s Richard A. Kerr, the longtime, award-winning climate-change scribe for Science magazine, the flagship publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The article, “What Happened to Global Warming? Scientists Say Just Wait a Bit,” was published October 1, 2009.
The article is important in the history of climate thought because it captures neatly the (over)confidence of the scientists who turn to models to justify their faith that past overestimation will soon be reversed. Judith Curry’s recent discovery of F.…