Perhaps the only positive advantage to be enjoyed as global warming dies the death in the cold mists, rains and fogs of a new (and totally expected) cooling period is that I no longer bore on about the subject - or at least, not quite so much. To paraphrase the mighty Python, this global warming is ex-global warming; this global warming is DEAD!
And to prove it, we have no less an authority than the Met Office (and it is difficult to be a lesser authority than that unforecast shower!) who quietly slipped out a press release a couple of weeks ago telling us that global temperatures have remained static for the last 16 years.
Some eagle-eyed hack at The Mail, no doubt snuffling through their waste-bins late at night, found the so-called press release and published it. Smelling salts all round at the Met Office and poor old Prof. Jones at East Anglia 'Polytechnic-Night-School' came over all faint. Since the publicity there has been a sustained soft-shoe shuffle from all concerned as they spun in 180 degrees un-saying their previous declarations that 15 years was long enough to establish a trend, the previous warmer period having lasted 15 years, natch!, and now they are trying to stretch the term required to establish a trend to 17 or even 20 years whilst they all practice sun-dancing in the hope that it gets a bit warmer.
Frankly, I wish them well because I would much rather have a warm globe than a cold one but given their abilities in things like, well, climate science, I don't rate their chances very highly. Even a piss up in a brewery is quite beyond their abilities.
Well, how do you measure the temperature if it changes very slowly? Well you measure now and again - about once in 5 years and it takes say 5 technicians max per country on a freelance basis. Not much of a salary or grant in that. Very very boring. So it all has to be sexed up a lot if you are going to get a gamut of uni departments and professorial chairs out of it.
On the other hand, if you are groping around in a dark cellar with no lights and no map and someone tells you there is a fatal hole lurking somewhere, well you might want lots of measurements and to proceed very very cautiously.
IMHO the politicos will stall and prevaricate long past any tipping point and we'll go down the tubes anyway. Just make sure the b"£stards have not bought all the high ground.
Posted by: rogerh | Thursday, 18 October 2012 at 13:36
Roger, I fear you are a cynic before your time!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 18 October 2012 at 18:30