Astounding Headline: "Global Temperatures 'To Decrease'"

April 5th, 2008 12:22 PM

Here's a deliciously inconvenient truth: five days after Nobel Laureate Al Gore told CBS's Lesley Stahl that folks who don't believe man is responsible for warming the planet are "like the ones who still believe that the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona and those who believe the Earth is flat," the BBC proclaimed "Global Temperatures 'To Decrease.'"

You really can't make this stuff up.

Putting a cherry on top was Investor's Business Daily which published an editorial hours later entitled "The Chill Is On." But, before we get there, let's first hear from the BBC (emphasis added throughout, picture courtesy AP):

Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

Hmmm. Global temperatures haven't risen since 1998. Wouldn't that make it ten years now since they peaked?

Heck, with global warming like this, who needs air conditioning?

Yet, maybe even more exquisite was the BBC's recognition of the end of the Australian drought:

El Nino warms the planet when it happens; La Nina cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.

It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.

Remember how important this drought was to climate alarmists? That argument got washed away, didn't it? Of course, maybe the IPCC and alarmists like Al Gore should have consulted Portland, Maine's Kristen Byrnes who, without the help of climate models, predicted the drought's end in 2007:

I was just looking at my ENSO 3.4 chart when I was responding to Eduardo's email. It looks like the ENSO has been positive for 95% of the last 6 years. Since Austrailia [sic] experiences warm and dry conditions during positive ENSO, six years of drought would not surprise me. But it is headed negative very quickly now, so you might want to dust off your umbrella.

For those that have forgotten, this is what the IPCC reported on April 7, 2007:

As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in southern and eastern Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and some eastern regions. ** D [11.4]

[…]

Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increased drought and fire.

Nice call, guys. Keep up the bad work.

Moving forward, IBD offered the following critique of the IPCC on Friday (emphasis added):

Were the IPCC not dedicated to spreading fear, it would admit its climate models, on which much of the global warming madness is based, are flawed. While pandering politicians, media sycophants and Hollywood dupes desperately seeking significance have lectured us about our carbon monoxide emissions, real temperature changes measured over the past 30 years have not matched well with increases predicted by the IPCC's models.

This is not some gas-guzzler's fantasy but the finding of a credible study published last year in the International Journal of Climatology. Looking at the data, four researchers concluded "the weight of the current evidence . . . supports the conclusion" there is no agreement between the models and the observation temperatures.

That means that projections of future warming are too high, that the entire global warming assumption is suspect, and that Gore should find something more productive to do with his time.

It also proves that Howard Hayden, physics professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, was correct in describing the machinery of the climate model-hysteria industrial complex as one that takes "garbage in" and spits "gospel out."

The global warming debate is not over. Indeed, the debate is beginning to favor the skeptics.

Bravo, although we prefer "climate realists."