For over 15+ years Mother Nature has refused to raise the Global Mean Temperature(GMT). This fact has grudgingly been acknowledged by global warming alarmists. This was not supposed to happen according to the consensus of the settled science. The debate was over. All the CO2 based Global Climate Models(GCMs) show a rising temperature as long as CO2 continues to accumulate unabated in the atmosphere. Both skeptics and warmists agree that CO2 has done just that over the period of temperature stasis.
But none of the models foresaw the curve that Mother Nature inserted into the runway and the models fell off lying in tears at the tears in their computer code.
Several explanations have been offered for the hiatus. There are at least ten floating around the blogosphere all of which are reactive and not proactive. One of these postulates that the missing heat has gone into the ocean since it is such a huge heat sink. The minute any explanation, let alone ten, is offered, acknowledgement of the problem is implied and the science is once again unsettled and the previous consensus has been shown to be wrong. And with ten explanations on the table - so far - the debate continues. When this happens and we hate it when it does science says: modify or abandon the theory.
SO we now have no consensus, no settled science and the debate is on. What a change a pause makes.
The heat into the ocean explanation is a modification of the theory while attempting to leave CO2 as the star of the climate drama. Fine. The GCMs must now be reworked to duplicate the hiatus at precisely the time Mother Nature decided to take a break from raising the GMT. The new theory as expressed in the revised GCMs, as a test of its validity, must now predict if and when the ocean heat will make its triumphant return to the atmosphere at which point we can expect the previous global warming to resume its upward path.
It is now up to the climatologists to explain the decision process that CO2 employs to make the transition from trapping heat in the atmosphere to stuffing it into the ocean. Until that theory is presented, the GCMs reworked to incorporate it and a correct prediction for the return of the heat to the atmosphere to validate it, cli sci can be said to be in a state of chaos much like the atmosphere it seeks to explain. Mother Nature has elevated her finger in the pompous face of the mythical consensus and reasserted her control over the climate.
Apparently CO2 is bi-polar: sometimes trapping heat in the atmosphere and sometimes trapping it in the ocean. What sets it off? Or CO2 is plant food and has little or nothing to do with atmospheric temperature and something else is going on. Around which of the ten explanations will a new consensus rally?
Politicians and environmental activists will prefer a POGO cause. If you can be convinced that the planet is in peril and that humans are at fault you will be easier to manipulate and more accepting of solutions offered.
Confronted with this inconvenient truth alarmist activists will not want to be distracted from their goal of guiding the world toward global governance. To divert attention from the failure of the consensus theory an emphasis on extreme weather has crept onto the stage of the Drama Greens. Now, whatever the weather CO2 is the cause of it. CO2 has morphed into a magic gas with superpowers right for any occasion. It’s hot - CO2 trapped heat. It’s cold - CO2 trapped heat which evaporated more water which caused more snow in winter. This conveniently overlooks an explanation of where the cold came from to make the snow. There is a fire - CO2 traps heat causing drought so more fires start. There is a flood - CO2 trapped heat which evaporated more water into the atmosphere which then came back down in record quantities to make a flood. There is a hurricane - CO2 traps more heat which means there is more energy in the system to produce more hurricanes or tornadoes. CO2 what can’t you do?
The only trouble with that theory is that as CO2 has increased severe weather has decreased.
Alarmaholics just can’t catch a break with their apocalyptic utterances. A reduction in extreme weather events is actually supposed to happen in a world where the poles are warming, whatever the cause, thus decreasing the temperature difference between tropics and polar regions. It is temperature differences between air masses where severe weather develops. The bigger the difference the more severe the weather. But you can’t scare anybody by telling them the weather will get better as temperatures increase so the correct but inconvenient theory in this case is ignored and a major alchemy is performed to assert more severe weather will appear as temperatures rise due to more energy in the system. And CO2 gets the blame for that. This is a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. But Mother Nature didn’t get the memo and has lowered her delivery of severe weather as the world has warmed.
It doesn’t matter how many humans believe something to be true if Mother Nature is not on their side they are lost. In the case of climate change neither temperatures nor extreme weather is outside the bounds of natural variability. Mother Nature has revealed herself to be a CAGW denier.
I have met POGO and he is not us.
