Years ago, we coined the phrase “global warming oops moment” to describe frequent developments that disprove predictions of climate Armageddon. Those moments are increasing so much that we should revise the term to “global warming oops era.”
Not only is virtually every dire prediction failing, they are failing spectacularly. In response, warmists ratchet up sky-is-falling scare stories.
If this sounds counterintuitive, it makes plenty of sense from the scare mongers’ perspective. As the doom narrative unravels, those advancing the agenda know their window of opportunity is closing.
To date, they have influenced political policies to justify billions of dollars in subsidies, billions in studies (if likely to prove the talking points) and billions in redistributed wealth. Al Gore alone has reaped tens of millions from campaigning to cool what he says is a planetary fever. He may be the first global warming billionaire.
But at some point, those paying the bills – taxpayers, energy ratepayers and even governmental bodies – will realize there are better uses for their money than pouring it down the global warming rat hole.
What justifies recasting periodic “global warming oops moments” into a “global warming oops era”?
Start with the recently leaked seventh periodic “experts” report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a governmental, not scientific, body dictating global warming science to governments.
A leaked copy of the report disclosed the inconvenient fact that forecasts of imminent doom have been dramatically wrong. Britain’s Mail newspaper reported that IPCC concedes there has been a 15-year “pause” in warming. Moreover, “they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997,” the Mail reports. Oops, as we say.
Global warming critics, who have noted the lack of warming all along, are having a field day. The leaked report reveals, “a staggering concoction of confusion, speculation and sheer ignorance,” observed Dr. Benny Peisner of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in Great Britain.
Even IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri conceded the warming pause may be as long as 17 years. Inconvenient facts in the IPCC’s climate report include an admission the earth was just as warm from 950 AD and 1250 AD, long before industrial development increased CO2 emissions.
You needn’t be a critic to notice. A recent study in Nature Climate Change from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, found computer models overestimated warming by 100 percent for two decades.
Why are model predictions so off-base? Critics always have said IPCC computer models grossly overestimate greenhouse gas’ influence on temperatures.
As “oops” moments go, it’s hard to top this one: 36 of 38 important climate computers forecasted doom that never occurred, says professor John Christy of the University of Alabama.
Actually, we can top that. A study in the journal Nature Climate compared 117 predictions made in the 1990s to actual temperatures and discovered a whopping 99 percent overestimated warming. By how much? On average, by twice what actually occurred.
As they say on late night TV, that’s not all. Six years ago, climate scientists predicted warming would render the Arctic ice-free by this year. Oops again. In August, nearly a million more square miles of ocean had ice compared with the year before, a 60 percent increase.
We learned last week, the Arctic’s significant ice growth, combined with increasing ice in the Antarctic are reaching record highs. “Earth has gained 19,000 Manhattans of sea ice since this date last year, the largest increase on record,” according to climate blogger Steven Goddard. “There is more sea ice now than there was on this date in 2002.”
Severe weather has not increased, as predicted. This is one of the quietest hurricane seasons in history, even though predictions told us we should be experiencing horrific storms. It’s been almost eight years without a hurricane of Category 3 or higher making landfall. Seas have not risen, as predicted. Polar bears have not gone extinct, as predicted. Just the opposite. There are many more of them.
Why trust tax dollars and sacrifice liberties to crystal-ball gazers with such a lousy track record? On Monday (Sept. 23) we may hear their best argument. That’s when the political debate to rewrite the IPCC report begins in Stockholm. The pretense that IPCC reports are settled science is exacerbated by the political will to make catastrophe out of normalcy, even despite their own findings. There are billions of dollars at stake. Expect another sky-is-still-falling declaration, despite what your lying eyes tell you.
Don’t expect the IPCC to consider actually useful scientific facts such as reported in the Wall Street Journal: slight global warming poses no net economic or ecological threat. Quite to the contrary, warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius over the coming 70 years would make cold areas in winter and nights slightly more comfortable, extend farming farther north, improve crop yields, expand forests and reduce winter deaths.
