Greg Jones devotes a Federalist column to an inconvenient fact for global warming alarmists: “the Earth’s average surface temperature has failed to significantly increase in nearly two decades, and all this despite ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Jones then documents efforts to explain this so-called “pause” in the warming trend, including new research involving hockey-stick high priest Michael Mann.
This isn’t the first time researchers have attempted to explain what they have previously denied. To date, there are more than 52 scientific theories attempting to solve the pause that doesn’t exist, from a lazy sun to trade winds to the wrong types of El Niño’s. But for some reason Mann’s explanation is the one; 53 is apparently the magic number.
Yet Mann’s paper blames the pause on ocean currents that have been simulated in climate models for years. And the “natural variability” that he refers to is exactly what many skeptics have proposed just might be missing. In fact, very qualified researchers have been insisting that the role of the sun—you know, the star that warms the planet—has been vastly understated.
Mann’s paper encapsulates perfectly the issue between skeptics of climate change and the hard-core believers: something in the models is always missing that is later found. What was wrong last time has been corrected, even though last time nothing was wrong. The same models that are considered gospel always come up short, only to be revised as gospel yet again.
Everyone understands that climate change research is tricky; countless variables constantly interacting with one another at ever-changing time and distance scales. And studying the Earth’s climate is indeed a worthwhile pursuit. But there is nothing scientific about denying actual, physical data, in this case the global average temperature over two decades. And nothing is academic or open-minded about demonizing an entire portion of the population pointing out the obvious by labeling them “deniers” as if they doubt the Holocaust.
If climate science is to truly progress, we need real acceptance that areas of the research are flawed. And that’s okay; refining and improving experiments lies at the very heart of scientific endeavor.
