…is even worse than it first appeared. It would appear that tree rings are worse than useless as a proxy for temperature.
[Late afternoon update]
The data has been tortured, and it has confessed:
Continent after continent, researchers are seeing no warming in the unprocessed data (see one thorough analysis here).
For years, I have been a true skeptic on the subject. That is, I wasn’t convinced that the planet was warming, but I was willing to concede the possibility, even probability, and be convinced, though I never thought that it justified the costly and draconian, even totalitarian measures being proposed to deal with it.
I’ve reached a tipping point. Now consider me a “denier.” The burden of proof has shifted, completely. The climate scientific community has clearly been engaged in a toxic combination of groupthink, overadoration of their theories and confirmation bias, and outright fraud, not to mention hiding a lot more than the decline. Whoever finally blew the whistle on them last month is, in my opinion, an unknown hero to humanity.
I’ll have more thoughts on this, and the implications for national and global policies, at PJM in the morning.
They lost me the first time I heard the phrase “The science is settled”.
No “real” scientist would ever use that phrase. The more I learned, (or rather didn’t learn since they refused to release anything), of their methods the more the word ‘fraud’ came to mind.
Is the climate changing? Maybe, but I wouldn’t give 6 to 5 one way or the other as to the direction it’s going. I hope it’s getting warmer. Civilization can survive another medieval warm period. A return to glaciation……not so much and I really don’t look forward to a return to hunter-gatherer society.
The late John Daly (the man from Tasmania, of whom the CRU people cheered when hearing of his passing) had a Web site where he showed weather station after weather station showing no long-term increase in temperature. His explanation of the putative warming trend was the “urban heat island effect” of ill-chosen weather stations not on his list of rural sites, but it seems that there was more to it, that some had their “thumbs on the scale” as it were.
Rand,
Please don’t call yourself a denier. This was horrible language when Algore used it, and it is when you use it.
Let the real data tell us what the climate has been doing lately.
Thank you for consistently maintaining a rational position all these years.
Please don’t call yourself a denier.
Well, I did put it in quotes…
I’ve been an agnostic on the main issues for a long time — I was perfectly willing to believe there might be substantial AGW but I didn’t consider it “settled”. As the man said. But when they came up with the hockey stick, I knew something fishy was going on. I worked with the Medieval Warm Period academically. Understanding the medieval warm period was one of the classic intellectual achievements of the 20th century, like understanding continental drift. You can’t really research or write about late antiquity or medieval times without accepting its reality, for Europe and the broader Atlantic world. As far as I know nobody’s even tried to iterate a discussion of those times that tries to assume a constant climate. That started to make me suspicious.
The whistleblower — should we call him/her “Deep Core”? — didn’t provide the first evidence. The emails and the Harry_Read_Me file was the final evidence.
As the real temperature data seems to be hard to come by, i propose we put out boxes collecting peoples own average temperature measurements every four years, worldwide.
Maybe keep it simple and just put two boxes on it : warm, cool.
That will be honest, cant fail.
The fact that they’ve never performed direct calibration studies between the historical instrumental methods and the newer satellite data really says all you need to know.
The satellites are primarily calibrated against weather balloons – so no particular problems there.
But the ground stations themselves are essentially “assumed valid.” Ignoring the microsite issues (barbeques, pavement…) and UHI issues (cities -tend- to be a minute fraction of a gridcell, some exceptions), there’s the presumption that their station is perfectly sited to be direct measurement of the average gridcell temperature.
It’s certainly a decent proxy, but still just amazing.
Rand,
Nice essay.
As far as bogeymen go, global warming seems to be pretty innocuous so far and less costly than overreaction to terrorism.
Here’s an epigram for you:
Right-wing demagogues create an environment of fear.
Left-wing demagogues create fear of the environment.
and less costly than overreaction to terrorism.
Good thing we haven’t actually overreacted to terrorism. . . if anything, our response to it has been incredibly restrained.
“Right-wing demagogues create an environment of fear.”
No, I’d say Islamofascist terrorists create a climate of fear. That by it’s very definition is the purpose of terrorism. “Right-wing demagogues” were responding to an actual witnessed and recorded act of terrorism which killed 3000 people and caused billions of dollars in damages. Furthermore, the right wingers have, for the most part, taken actions with the ultimate aim of expanding and protecting individual liberty and freedom. Left-wing demagogues are reacting to a fabricated and imaginary “crisis” in order to make a wholesale power grab at centralized command/control/collectivism. You see, one of them is grounded in reality while the other is floating around in some eco-fascist’s wet dream.
Josh, exactly. If we responded to terrorism the way the left wants us to respond to “AGW” we’d have bombed every city on the planet flat figuring they had some terrorists residing there.
As far as bogeymen go, global warming seems to be pretty innocuous so far and less costly than overreaction to terrorism.
Except that terrorists have actually done something (mainly kill civilians).
I’ve yet to see “Global Climate
WarmingCoolingChangeJusticeWhatever” do anything but give statists a reason to take more money from my wallet.