It's amusing to see how the left reacts when things don't work out as predicted. Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted how USA Today's Kelly Kennedy described a major malfunction in Obamacare which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to go without health insurance next year as a "glitch."
On the "climate change" front, those darned "glitches" abound. In an item today about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Karl Ritter at the Associated Press attempted to report on how the IPCC plans to address the fact that there hasn't been any global warming, human-caused or otherwise, since the late 1990s. A hilarious headline spewed forth, followed by eruptions of ridiculous and hysterical words (HT James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web; bolds and numbered tags are mine throughout this post):
CLIMATE REPORT STRUGGLES WITH TEMPERATURE QUIRKS
Scientists working on a landmark U.N. report on climate change are struggling over how to address a wrinkle in the meteorological data that has given ammunition to global-warming skeptics: The heating of Earth's surface appears to have slowed [1] in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising.
For years, skeptics have touted what looks like a slowdown [2] in surface warming since 1998 to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that humans are cooking the planet by burning coal, oil and natural gas.
Scientists and statisticians have dismissed the purported slowdown [3] as a statistical mirage, [4] arguing among other things that it reflects random climate fluctuations and an unusually hot year picked as the starting point for charting temperatures. They also say the data suggests the "missing" heat is simply settling - temporarily - in the ocean.
But as scientists study the issue, the notion of a slowdown [5] has gained more mainstream attention, putting pressure on the authors of the new U.N. report to deal with it.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is expected to assert that global warming is continuing. It is also expected to affirm with greater certainty than ever before the link between global warming and human activity.
Leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press show there are deep concerns among governments over how to address the purported slowdown [6] ahead of next week's meeting of the IPCC.
"I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying, 'Look, the IPCC is silent on this issue,'" said Alden Meyer of the Washington-based advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists.
"Wrinkles," "quirks," and "purported slowdowns," oh my!
All six of the tagged items are in essence the AP's Ritter and the warmists (but I repeat myself) trying to tell the world: "You're not really seeing what think you're seeing." Yet somehow, their computer models are all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-predicting — even when they're wrong, as they have been for years.
This would all be funny if it weren't for the fact that what's ultimately at stake is the presence or absence of a global-economy controlling carbon tax regime.
WSJ's Taranto also has these observations:
... these guys look shifty not just for scientists but for PR men. Specialists in crisis management emphasize the importance of building (or rebuilding) public trust by being both honest and forthcoming. But look at that Meyer quote. He's not calling for forthrightness, just for some sort of statement so that critics--whom he disparages as "denialists"--can't say the IPCC "is silent."
The AP itself uses the term "climate skeptics," which is less pointed than "denialists" but is still problematic. The purported opposition between "skeptics" and adherents to "the scientific consensus" is nonsensical, for skepticism is at the very heart of the scientific method. When the data call a theory into question, a scientist revisits the theory. Instead, the panel employing the antiscientific method: It "is expected to affirm" the theory "with greater certainty than ever."
And look how the AP sums up that theory: "that humans are cooking the planet by burning fossil fuels and cutting down CO2-absorbing forests." That's science fiction, not science.
Indeed.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
