Despite the more hysterical predictions we've heard of late, the evidence continues to mount that if the earth was warming, it stopped quite some time ago.
Of course, don't expect this fact to be widely reported, if it indeed even makes it into any U.S. newspapers or television broadcasts.
Read the entire interview from The Australian, but a couple of admissions are quite striking:
Catastrophic predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Al Gore? Any reaction? Hello? Anyone home? <!--break-->
A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.
Wishful thinking, perhaps. More like they'll just change the subject. One thing about proponents of the global warming scam is they'll never admit they were wrong. They would never be able to regain any credibility, so don't wait around for them to admit they were incorrect.
I wonder what those who called the truth-tellers deniers will have to say?
How about those who characterized skeptics as being on par with Holocaust deniers?
What will they have to say?
Likely nothing. In fact, we'll still see apocalyptic stories of impending doom, with reports how global warming is hastening the arrival of spring, despite cool temperatures across much of the United States.
If a basic tenet of media responsibility is to report the facts as they are, we would see an even-handed debate citing global warming proponents and skeptics. Yet the overwhelming amount of reportage we see leans decidedly to the side of the proponents, while skeptics are dismissed.
The shame is the public is being misled and the media will lose more credibility if their doomsday scenarios don't pan out. In fact, I'd suggest the hysteria will be getting worse over time, what with one report even suggesting now that global warming may be responsible for earthquakes.
The cost to the public may be even greater as a result of legislation forcing overly ambitious controls over carbon dioxide emissions which in the end may do little or nothing.
