“Global Warming” Goes Ptolemaic
It's as if the AGW crowd has simply throw up their hands and yelled, "Ockham's Razor be damned!" Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming
Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.
Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.
The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.
“Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,'' Wood said in an interview. “Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there's no global warming going on.''
Got that?
So here is how the story goes. "We got this theory, see, all about how your SUV is destroying the earth by pumping it full of CO2, which is a greenhouse gas, you know. As CO2 increases so does the temperatures. (Didn't you see Al's flick?) Except, of course, for those times when increased CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't lead to higher temperatures. We thought we might be in trouble there, as our theory looks like it says the opposite thing. But, don't you worry, because we got ourselves a codicil, you see, that allows for cooler temperatures while Global Warming is still ongoing. Pretty nifty, eh? And if that isn't enough and the weather still ain't acting like its supposeda in a decade or so, we got a line in to the Pope to see about swinging ourselves a special dispensation."
What could more scientific than that?
Or, as Tully over at Stubborn Facts put it brilliantly:
When the data inconveniently refuses to conform to your theory, just how should a True Believer in that theory respond?
Why, add an epicycle, of course!
I suppose the more baroque a theory is the better it expresses "consensus."





