'Climate Change' Apologists in Retreat

Have you noticed how the scientists screaming hysterically about "climate change" have no discernible sense of humor? It's as if they're so tied up in being righteous that every other emotion has deserted them. The Epoch Times recently ran a piece discussing newly published papers that question global warming orthodoxy, entitled “Era of Unquestioned and Unchallenged Climate Change Claims is Over.” Prominent skeptics like Willie Soon have long argued that changes in climate may not be wholly, or even significantly, tied to tiny changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. Maybe, for example, the sun has something to do with it? Soon and other scientists discuss this and other alternative ideas in the peer-reviewed papers referenced in the piece.

The urban heat island effect was discussed in some detail in one of the papers. It is well established that urban areas, where a great many meteorological stations are located, retain more heat than rural and uninhabited areas that make up most of the area of the nation. Is this distorting effect properly accounted for in the temperature record? The authors make a compelling case that it is not. Similarly, there is ample evidence to suggest that recreations of the climate record going back to 1850 and beyond are flawed as well. This is the famous "hide the decline" issue that troubles many a scientist that the authors raise once more. Taken together, the new papers provide strong evidence of a fact that should be obvious: our climate system is not entirely controlled by a single variable (greenhouse gas concentrations) among the hundreds of variables the contribute to climate behavior.

The response from the acolytes of the First Church of Climate Change was sadly predictable. Apologists are basically window salesman on a global scale. We've all heard the pitch: buy these triple paned, double-thick, argon-filled, NASA-approved windows and your energy bills will be drop to zero. How much do they cost? Who cares! You can't afford not to buy them. Meanwhile if the neighborhood handyman drops by and suggests maybe your home would be a bit nicer to live in if you replaced the 30-year-old furnace, the window salesman will laugh at his ignorance. It's all about the windows when that's all you're selling. And "climate change" is all about greenhouse gases when that's the only hypothesis you got.