Warmist flip-flops [update]

A guest post this morning from reader Kerry Sharp.

Jeanette Fitzsimons is wrong in stating about warming that "the science that shows it is happening gets stronger all the time."

MP Jim Anderton stated "the vast majority of international scientists in the field of climatology believe that excessive CO2 and methane emissions are a prime causal factor."

Since when has scientific truth been established by "consensus" or "majority vote?"  Truth is established by evidence, not by popular vote.

It’s sometimes suggested however that the science is settled. However, if a respected MIT climate scientist like Richard Lindzen can still argue in the Wall Street Journal that "the science is not settled," and other scientists disagree, then doesn't the very dispute itself prove that the science isn't settled?*

In any case, there are at least 32000 scientists who have signed a petition stating that they disagree with theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

And the data that are the backbone of climate science are now revealed as a complete mess.

So much for “consensus”, or what the IPCC scientists’ data shows us.

The history of science is littered with the carcasses of dead theories, killed of by individuals who assaulted the scientific "consensus." Since when has scientific truth been done by consensus or a show of hands? Science is the systematic knowledge of Nature through unbiased observation and experimentation. So why is the term "consensus" applied to the science of Global Warming or Climate Change?

The theory of Global Warming itself seems to reappear in various guises. It has a curious history, dating back to the French mathematician Joseph Fourier who first postulated a terrestrial greenhouse in the early nineteenth century.

Yet science has flip-flopped five times on the issue since the beginning of the twentieth century as scientists and the media proclaimed approaching climate doom. - first by global cooling, then global warming, then global cooling and so on until today when we are back to warming.

A senior contributor to the International Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] has stated,

We have to offer up scary scenarios, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. . .  Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

And from an IPCC climate scientist contributor,

We have a vested interest in creating panic because money will then flow to climate scientists."

From New Scientist,

Carbon trading won't do a thing about climate change, but will make a lot of money for a lot of people."

Honest scientists with no vested interest - over 43,000 (and growing) - have petitioned their governments to say that mankind has no effect on climate.

My own conclusions from studying the issue of Global Warming Climate Change over the past few years is that Global Warming is NOT happening. The evidence indicates that there has been no global warming this decade.

The so-called "experts" have compensated for this aberration by saying in public that it is a "blip" in there predictions, and private that it is “a travesty” that they can’t explain it.

"Climate change" is definitely happening but is has always happened through history. During the time of the Vikings, Europe experienced a time of warming where grapes could be grown in Scotland, and Greenland was green. When the climate cycled into a cooler period, the glaciers were encroaching on farmland at the rate of 100 metres per year.

On the claim that Greenland and Antarctic ice is melting so fast that a 1.0 to 1.3 metre rise in sea level is unavoidable, according to late 2008 data from the GRACE satellite tracking system, regarded as "ideal" for keeping tabs on the Greenland icecap, the ice melted so fast between 2003 and 2008 that "it is now estimated the Greenland is accountable for a half millimetre [0.5mm] rise in global sea level per year," reported scientists from the Center for Space Research, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Earth to Copenhagen climate scientists: take note, half a millimetre a year equates to 50 millimetres a century, or two inches of sea level increase!

And from the respected Science journal, earlier this year: "Glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland's ice Armageddon has come to an end."

There seems to have been a synchronous switch-off of the speed-up. Nearly everywhere around south-east Greenland, outlet glacier flows have returned to the levels of 2000."

Obviously, someone's been telling outright lies to scare politicians into introducing draconian and expensive carbon laws that we the people will have to pay for, and this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Kerry Sharp

UPDATE: Tim Blair has all the links you need on the Copenhagen Hopenchangen LovenHugin.