Frustrated Warmists Pull Another Cool Fast One

By Marc Sheppard

Continued global cooling has forced clamoring climate alarmists to move the goal posts – again.

A study released yesterday confirms that global temperatures have remained flat since 2001 “despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations” and predicts they may cool for another 30 years. Needless to say, that won’t silence any of the blowhards attacking George Will’s February assertion that “there has been no recorded global warming for more than a decade.”

But get this – study author and spokesman Kyle Swanson insists his findings change nothing in the AGW debate, as following this “cooling event,” which isn’t “like anything we've seen since 1950,” warming “will return and be very aggressive." Don’t be surprised by Swanson’s unmitigated gall – we heard this same brand of bet-hedging double-talk from egg-faced alarmists not once, but twice last year.

As we reported then, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed last April that an impending phase shift in a natural climate event – the Pacific Decadal Oscillation -- would likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years. Aware of the IPCC blasphemy their prediction wrought, one JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, Josh Willis, was quick to explain:

“The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate. In fact, these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

Uh-huh.

Just ten days later, a study by Dr. Noel Keenlyside et al, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, predicted that a pending weak cycle in the “conveyor belt” of southern warm water known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation would also decrease global surface temperatures – but over the next decade. And they too, took steps to cover their green-obliged derrières with the lead author telling Bloomberg News:

“If we don't experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn't mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us. There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.''

Words associate Mojib Latif, a professor at the Leibniz Institute, translated in no uncertain terms:

“Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won't be as bad as previously thought.”

Nice try, guys.

In both yesterday’s and last year’s examples, the message from these courageous men of science is clear: Yes, of course it’s getting cooler – any fool can see that -- and it might for a generation to come. But does that mean that speculatively achievable plans to completely retool the world’s energy supply and delivery systems during a global recession -- based entirely on our speculative warnings of a manmade global warming apocalypse -- should perhaps be put on hold until we can figure this out?

Why, of course not.