Perhaps now we can have a reasonable discussion. Let’s look at how we got here so we can better understand the events that are going to unfold next.
For about 20 years, the earth was warming at a historically alarming rate. Concurrent with this, levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, a known greenhouse gas, were rising gradually and linearly. Credible theories were put forward that these might be related. Legit science started developing climate models. The vast majority of these failed to predict the future retroactively by feeding them actual data from the past (i.e. they were useless). But this should not be surprising given how complex the system is.
But they showed mostly a gradual, and not especially concerning increase in temperature.
Along comes Michael Mann and his pals, who introduce the idea that the system has an inherent instability point in the future that fundamentally and irreversibly alters the climate feedback loop and locks us into doomsday. The hockeystick.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Al Gore decides that this is his time and his crisis, and he begins to both promote it and exploit it for money, power and fame (MPF). He builds an alliance between reasonable concerned people, environmental fanatics, anti-progress fanatics, anti-humanity fanatics, people jealous of their neighbor’s SUV, the media, Hollywood, big business, people around the globe in love with the idea of BigGovernment, and of course actual global BigGovernment. The only people not on board were China and India, who had nothing to gain and lots to lose by restricting energy usage.
It’s an amazing story. Perhaps the best bit of marketing and propaganda in the history of humanity, outside of the major religions. It was a brilliant crisis. It had science cred. It threatened our children. It was impossible for the average Joe to prove, or disprove, of frankly even trust their own senses and common sense. It required dramatic action that could only happen via a coordinated effort from all of the planet’s BigGovernments. Results were impossible to measure. It was impossible to determine how much global BigGovernment was required. It could be dragged out for 100 years. A EuroProtoSocialist wet dream sort of a crisis.
All based on an unproven theory that CO2 might be causing the earth to warm, and that there might be a tipping point that makes this irreversible.
Next the big money enters in a big way, and BigGovernments plan sweeping control over the primary engine of modern lifestyle, energy. European social democracy BigGovernment types, as usual, lead the path and do major damage to their economies by distorting markets. Canada pretends to play but is smart enough to avoid any real damage by keeping the oil sands pumping and sifting and generally being a leader in missed Kyoto targets, all while passing lots of stupid but meaningless feel good enviro restrictions on things like idling, lightbulbs and grocery bags.
But the earth has a different plan and a bloody good sense of humor. Around 1998, the warmest year on record (admittedly a local outlier) , the temp increases flattens out. It stays flat for about 6 years, then it starts to decline. The rate of decline increases. All while CO2 just continues to grow linearly. None of this proves, or disproves either a dangerous long term warming trend, or CO2 as cause. What it does do is drive a stake through the heart of the validity of climate modeling. None of the models predicted this (I assume). In fact, they predicted the opposite. As of 2005, the very core of the science that drove the IPCC, and global BigGovernments’ drive to regulate everything was completely bankrupt.
At this point the scientific community continued to behave like a scientific community, and question if this is how things actually work. And they learned a great deal about how things actually work. The response was excommunication, at many levels, up to and including continued employment of anyone who didn’t toe the line. We got "settled science” and “consensus” and “deniers”. And we got the books cooked. Possibly by only a handful of scientists, but the ones who had sold their souls to the global BigGovernment movement through its central planning brain, the UN’s IPCC, presumably for some MPF.
These facts have been visible for more than 5 years. But you had to look. And then you had to get over the condescending put downs and attacks on your objectivity, intelligence, morality impartiality, and in some cases your wallet. Some did. Thank you.
This started to change about 2 weeks ago.
You are now seeing three different communities react to these events:
The professionals want both revenge, and a return to the normalcy of science.
The man on the street, having been disingenuously taught to judge the advance of warming via the frequency and nature of extreme weather, and by weather patterns in general, has formed an opinion over 10 years that the earth doesn’t seem to be warming. In fact, it might be cooling. It’s curious how the untrained, given time and the freedom to think, actually conclude that that they think is happening, is what’s happening. This group is now realizing that they were duped by environmentalists, science, politicians, the media and General Electric.
And BigGovernment itself will try to exploit the tail end of the crisis by grabbing your money and your freedom for all it’s worth before it’s too late.
Mike, quoting Mike from two years ago: "My predication here is that once the hype-o-meter peeks, the media is going to flip the story into "the data was manipulated, science fails, etc etc". "
But don’t worry, these clowns can be trusted with your health. They are smarter than you.
Mike.
