Thursday, September 26, 2013

Climate science denial reloaded

Break out the Champaign and gas-guzzling SUVs ’cause global warming is officially over! Now we can now burn up all the dirty tarsands oil we want and frack to our hearts’ content.

An apparent lull in rising temperatures over the past decade proves there is no global warming!

Well that, at least, is the narrative spun by con cranks like Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail and Lawrence Solomon of the National Post.

But the science tells a different story.

Can’t bank on short term trends

Climate science deniers employ an agenda-driven interpretation of the data. Skeptical Science shows how they use short time frames to distort reality:

Above, time frames are cherry picked to support the absurd premise that temperatures are flat and global warming has stopped.

But an honest interpretation of the data shows a troubling long-term warming trend:

What happens if an actual cooling period comes?

The Earth has a very complex climate. It’s possible a real cooling period could come our way. In fact, that’s exactly what happened from about 1945 to 1975. Then temperatures were on a slight downward trend:

But by 1990, global warming sprang back with a vengeance. It was as if the cooling period never happened:

Over the past 20 years, global warming has actually sped up.

So clearly a lull in warming is, by no means, an indication the phenomenon has — by some unexplainable process — come to a stop.

Conclusion

According to the science, the planet is warming due to a continuous rise of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which are higher now than they’ve been in millions of years.

We mustn’t allow ourselves to be fooled by neo-cons with a corrupt anti-regulation economic agenda. Their misanthropic philosophy of unfettered greed and self-interest will be the downfall of civilization if we allow it.

2 comments:

  1. Wente and all the charlatans like her distort and do it quite deliberately. She ignores the increasing acidification of our oceans or the steadily increasing levels of atmospheric water vapour that, combined with the now more powerful polar jet are generating the Rossby Waves than bring Calgary (and many other places in the world) "once a century" floods every eight years. This is not a function of ignorance or inadvertence. These people sow doubt quite deliberately.

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  2. Agree 100%. I imagine the neo-con philosophy is that they'll be dead by the time the sh*t hits the fan, so it really isn't their problem. I put them in the same league as the Nazis and Soviets.

    Humans tend to view their progeny as their legacy, so they care about their children's future. These self-aggrandizing sociopaths have an egotistical view of legacy which makes it easy enough for them to shrug off their children's future.

    Of course it's up to humanity to stand up to these primitive nihilists. Their values are evil enough on the face of it. If we don't, it could be said we deserve what we got coming...

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