Dafydd over at Big Lizards has a thought, well reasoned and articulate explanation of the questions that simply are not being answered in all the hype over global warming. Because it is so carefully worded and so obvious correct i the questions it raises, I predict that Dafydd's inbox in experiencing rapid warming (to the point of flashing to steam) due to incoming rants from the true believers.
Prof. Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist at James Cook University in Queensland, supplies some: MGT rose until 1998… and then it simply stopped rising:
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Looking at the Wikipedia article on the temperature record, since 1850 (the "instrument period"), we see that the rise wasn't even consistent during the industrial era: from a low around 1910, the temperature rose fairly precipitously, a little less than 1º F — until 1940; at which point, it began to drop.
It fell for 15 years, hitting local nadirs in 1955, 1965, and the late 1970s… then it started rising again for the last 20 years. There is no plausible correlation of this rise, fall, and rise again to world industrialization, which rose consistently and exponentially during this entire period.
So the "rise" in MGT has been anything but smooth: MGT rises in fits and starts, and sometimes even falls back significantly.
All right, the first question: the temperature record clearly shows that there was global cooling during the twentieth century. Since world industrialization and the release of greenhouse gases cannot account for that cooling, what natural event caused it? Does anybody have a guess?
This is the kind of thinking that really needs to be done on this issue. It's really important to understand that the much ballyhooed record rise in temperature is actually quite small. It's also important to ask the question that if this is the "warmest period in 1,000 years" what cause it to be as warm or warmer the last time?
Go read it, it's quite well argued. (Good luck on the whole inbox thing, Dafydd).
