“The Earth is an unimaginably intricate system comprised of countless subsystems – many of which are poorly understood and some, probably, still unknown. The science that purports to explain those systems is unsettled and, well…, complicated.”

It’s complicated. Trees are natural carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But they also emit volatile chemicals that can form methane and ozone, both powerful greenhouse gases.  A 2014 study suggests that deforestation between 1850 and 2000 may have reduced volatile chemical emissions enough to “slightly offset the warming from greenhouse gas emissions.”

But it’s more complicated than that. Trees’ chemical emissions can also form aerosols that impact the climate in different ways. For instance, they can create a haze that reflects sunlight back into space. Aerosol particles may also “act as seeds for cloud droplets,” which similarly reflect sunlight away from the Earth. …

“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeller at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it.”

Susan Solomon, a climatologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, says that Fyfe’s framework helps to put twenty-first-century trends into perspective, and clearly indicates that the rate of warming slowed down at a time when greenhouse-gas emissions were rising dramatically.

 – Jeff Tollefson, “Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Debate Flares Up Again.” Nature, February 24, 2016.

It was officially noted in early 2016 with the above article in Nature, which was subtitled “Researchers now argue that slowdown in warming was real.”

I was reminded of this upon reading Pierre Gosselin’s recent post at NoTricksZone, “Global Temperature Rise Some 75% Lower Than Models Projected!…

“Fear of global warming serves the interests of countless numbers of individuals and organizations. Idealistic dreamers of social justice, population control, and world government were early leaders in the global warming movement. They were joined by delegates to the United Nations and countless other officials who sought more power through government expansion.”

Global warming has been described as a hoax, scam and conspiracy as well as by other pejorative terms. It is true that many elites conspired to promote noble causes by instilling fear of global warming and hatred of fossil fuels. For example, the organizer of the UN Earth Summit in 1992 was a long-time advocate of world government while Mikhail Gorbachev and Al Gore sought political power. UN Assistant Secretary General Robert Muller went a step further in wanting our hearts and minds.…

“As another financial/commodity trading scheme, [cap-and-trade] will find favor. As a means of changing the weather, I would not bet on it.”

Has my first letter-to-the-editor, published in the Wall Street Journal, in June 2007 stood the test of time? I’ll let you decide. But for me, eight years later, I feel a mixture of “I told you so” and bit of dismay.

Some background. A few years after moving to Charlottesville, Virginia, I realized that the University of Virginia here had been home to a several notables in climate science such as Professors S. Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, and, of course, Michael Mann. I became emboldened by the power of my new computer and my enthusiasm to do something to counter the full blast of climate alarmism then being propagated by Al Gore, his disciples, and his film, An Inconvenient Truth.…