Dear Director-General, 'mea culpa, mea maxima culpa'!

I shall pay my BBC licence fee with a skip and a smile next year when it falls due.  I am a humble penitent who has committed the sin of calumny against this splendid and august British institution.  Yes, yes, you can drag up all those rude tirades I aimed against the BBC in the past, but that was just youthful - who sniggered? - impetuosity. 

Either that, or, and this has only just occurred which is silly of me because it is so obvious, the BBC has been following this blog closely and altered its editorial line accordingly  lest it bring down on its miserable head the wrath of Duff!  Yes, yes, on second thoughts that is much the more likely.

Anyway, the BBC, or at least its eminent and wise climate correspondent, Mr. Paul Hudson, has taken a very un-BBC line on global warming.  Under a heading of "What happened to global warming?" he writes (his emphasis):

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

In one brief, easily understandable article he sums up the pros and cons of the AGW controversy.  I must stress that he does not, quite properly, take sides or come to a conclusion:

So what can we expect in the next few years?

Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly. [The Met Office - heh, heh, heh!  Sorry, but I couldn't resist a brief interjection - remember their summer forecasts for the last 3 years?]

It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).

Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.

He ends with another extraordinary paragraph coming from the BBC - a joke - in the face of pending catastrophe, no less!

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.

Alright, it's not a great joke but just bear in mind the source - the climate correspondent of the BBC!

Settled science?  Heh, heh, heh!

My thanks to Drudge for the link.

Comments

[dearieme]

"Sceptics ...insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest". This sceptic doesn't. I strongly suspect that the climate models are worthless. It seems that many of the temperature measurements are biased. Chunks of the temperature record have apparently been thrown away. But just because the Global Warmmongers routinely suffer from hubris, incompetence and dishonesty, that doesn't justify my making a forecast that simply opposes theirs.

Thought: I am suddenly struck that the Global Warmmongers carefully avoid the word "forecast". The reason is, I suppose, obvious.

[David Duff]

As so often you touch the nub of the problem, 'DM'. My difficulty with all this climate so-called science is that the very foundations of it are built on hot air! Anthony Watts has demonstrated beyond doubt that land-based temperature measuring as a historical record is hopelessly flawed. The posturing of the dendrologists and their secretive refusal to share data simply leaves them looking ridiculous. Even the satellite data, upon which I lean slightly more heavily, is 'noisy' and messy. Thus, the question remains open as to what, exactly and precisely, is a mean global temperature?

There's no question that global temperatures do change, any idiot knows that, but the second question as to its cause remains open. My common-sense, never a very reliable indicator, tells me that the sun has much to do with it, possibly by affecting the oceans, but according to the experts I (try to) read no-one is at all clear on the basic physics of the process.

The Hot Air Fanatics made their big mistake when they climbed into bed with the politicians at which point alarmed cynics like me took note and began to investigate for ourselves - as best we could. Anyway, how could you ever trust anyone who got into bed with Al Gore?

[JK]

I'm just guessing here but I'd bet Mr. Hudson didn't get his Meteorology Degree from the Al Gore School of the Utterly Stoopid.

(Sometimes it's hard to believe Gore's home-State (Tennessee) borders Bill Clinton's (Arkansas). Anyway, I sorely wish the forecasts had been leaning more to their side this fine Ozarkian morning. I've been sitting in my wool socks and long-johns all this fine early October day awaiting our first average mean freeze-date (of November 4th) but at least no a/c today.

My fingers are stiff with cold or I'd commented on both the latest two fine posts. By the way David, you have by now contracted with Amazon dot for a copy of the tome above ain't ye?