Essays in Idleness

There are reasons for everything, yet the reasons are not always the first to occur to a glib and unphilosophical mind.

“In the early twenty-first century, satellite-derived tropospheric warming trends were generally smaller than trends estimated from a large multi-model ensemble.”

This earnest attempt at bafflegab comes from the abstract of a paper just published in Nature Geoscience, by Benjamin D. Santer et alia, et alia — a list of “global warming” respectables that is almost a who’s who. It means they are now conceding, as quietly as possible, that there “was” an “hiatus” in the warming trend perceived by their instruments in the previous generation, despite their best efforts at fudging the data. The “sceptics” had already pointed this out, and were persecuted for it.

In plain English, the computerized climate models were wrong. Rather than continuing, or even accelerating, the global warming stopped. They assume, perhaps desperately hope, it will resume shortly.

I don’t. I don’t assume anything, except that the world grows gradually warmer after the trough of each Ice Age, then cooler towards the next; that there are trends within trends within trends through the centuries; and that the Sun has something to do with it. Moreover, I aver that if Man thinks he can undo God’s work in the Creation, he is optimistic. For the planet was designed to cope with us.

We can have some transient effect, however, through our urbanization, and our gardening. This makes common sense, and I fully believe that our aggregate efforts have contributed to the measurable increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. I don’t believe we can predict temperatures from it, however; and computer modelling strikes me as an exceptionally naïve dead end, for it requires assumptions piled upon assumptions. The meteorologists’ computer models cannot tell me if it’s going to rain in the next three hours. (I was soaked to the skin for believing them the other day.) The chances the climatologists can predict overall weather patterns through many decades, by elaborations of the same methods, are — I would estimate — zilch.

Meanwhile by long experience we should be prepared for warmer or cooler or just the same; more rain or less in the fluctuations; and Arctic icecaps that expand and shrink. The mean sea level, barring some astronomical event, will rise and fall gradually, as it has done through the ages, and archaeological enthusiasts such as myself note that land levels do that, too. And this quite apart from the fact that every non-buoyant human construction is sinking into the ground.

A lot of government money — both directly, and by regulatory piracy — rides on “anthropogenic global warming,” and the Trumps of this world are right to cut it off. If the sky does not fall, Chicken Little should not receive another grant.

The best part of the satellite surveys, is the evidence that carbon dioxide may be having some effect. The planet has been overall greening, these last fifty years or so. You see, plants need it, and flourish when it is more plentifully available. To identify this colourless and odourless gas as a pollutant was what we call a “try-on.” The trees do not appreciate it, however; and I like trees. I also like food, and am in favour of growing more.

Now, were this Idlepost to meander beyond my current self-imposed daily limit of two handwritten pages, I might begin trying to explain why liberals and progressives will continue to bank on scare-monger stories. It’s not just the money. They are working on a conception of “science” from out of Descartes and Bacon, that should have been discredited for good by the quantum mechanics of the twentieth century. In a word, they are victims of their own scientism.