Global warming on hold for next 30 years, says warming advocate
Kyle Swanson of the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is convinced that the earth is catastrophically warming, but
not now, due to several cooling factors that have combined to stop warming for the time being.
Discovery News reported in March 2009:
Swanson thinks the [non-warming] trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it’s just a hiccup, and that humans’ penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
“When the climate kicks back out of this state, we’ll have explosive warming,” Swanson said. “Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive.”
So, global warming is not currently happening, but it will resume, right after the current 30 pause is over. And what if the warming does not resume at the end of 30 years? Will the warming advocates of 2039 announce yet another 30 year delay? I’m reminded of the Five Year Plans of Stalin’s Russia, and also of Sandra Day O’Connor’s assurance in the 2003
Grutter v. Bollinger decision that preferential racial quotes for nonwhites would cease to be necessary in 25 years.
I looked for Swanson’s and Anastasios A. Tsonis’s original article at Geophysical Research Letters to make sure that the quotations at Discovery News fairly represented their views. The article is not freely available online, but in the abstract of the article, which is online, the authors conclude:
This suggests that a break in the global mean temperature trend from the consistent warming over the 1976/77–2001/02 period may have occurred.
Meanwhile, Melanie Phillips
reports on a revolt by members of the American Chemical Society against the organization’s editor who had said that the consensus view on warming is growing “increasingly difficult to challenge, despite the efforts of diehard climate-change deniers.”
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James N. writes:
The global warming fiasco is going to change our mental universe profoundly.
From the very beginning of what is called the Enlightenment, science and scientists have held a special place in public consciousness.
But the ease with which science as a branch of philosophy has been corrupted by public funding, of which global warming is only the most glaringly obvious example, will eventually erode any inherent confidence that people still have in ideas or concepts that are scientific.
Science has of course been out of Philosophy Departments for over a century (are there any real Philosophy Departments left?). But philosophy is the discipline which should study the global warming affair, for it has much to teach us about the core concepts of science which we have obviously forgotten.
LA replies:
Your main point is that science will be unfortunately degraded in the public mind because of the warming fraud. But it’s scientists who are arguing against the warming fraud. The lesson is not that science is false, but that fraud is false.
James N. replies:
I guess you really WERE an English major!
Science is neither true nor false. It’s a type of philosophical inquiry that has proven useful across a wide range of human endeavors.
But the usefulness of science hinges on following the rules. One of the important rules, or methods, is hypothesis testing. In order to engage in valid hypothesis testing, the scientist must achieve, a priori, a state of equipoise with regard to the experimental results. That is to say, if you evaluate data while having a monetary interest, or even a rooting interest, in the results, THE METHOD DOESN’T WORK.
Now, “equipoise” is a goal to strive for. Humans being what they are, perfect equipoise is seldom achieved.
But the massive funding of global warming “research” virtually REQUIRES a given conclusion before the work is done. That’s why there are all these ridiculous “research papers” that conclude that abnormal cold is caused by global warming, or that, after thirty years (why not 29 or 31) that the nonexistent global warming will resume, and be much more severe, because of “carbon forcing,” another entirely fictitious concept.
The history of science is replete with episodes like this, like Ptolemy’s epicycles to explain retrograde motion of the planets. But scientists who proposed error were seldom rewarded with titles and honors, or their modern equivalents. The alliance of science and government carries many risks, as so ably expounded by Churchill, when he warned of “a new Dark Age, made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of perverted science.”
LA replies:
As in your first comment, I don’t understand your use of the term “philosophy” in this context. The subject is the integrity of the scientific method as an exploration of physical reality. I don’t know what that has to do with philosophy.
Second, I fail to see how my first reply to you was wrong. You had said that the exposure of the falsity of the manmade global warming claims would discredit science in people’s minds. I replied that the exposure of the corruption of science in the manmade global warming scare does not and should not discredit science. To the contrary, it shows that good science defeats bad, fraudulent, or corrupt science.
Finally, your reference to Churchill’s June 1940 speech on the Nazi threat to civilization is not apt. Churchill was not referring to mere government funding of science, but to the takeover of science by demonic evil.
Ben W. writes:
There you again Lawrence. “Churchill was not referring to mere government funding of science, but to the takeover of science by demonic evil.” Using code words to refer to Richard Dawkins. :-)
LA replies:
Actually, I thought some libertarian-leaning commenter would admonish me for not realizing that government funding of science is the takeover of science by demonic evil. But then again, maybe not, given that even the ultimate critic of government, Ayn Rand, had the highest admiration for the Manhattan Project.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 01, 2009 01:53 AM | Send