Baby, it's cold outside..
Telegraph | Opinion | There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
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). ...
In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.
Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?
In other news:
Tory chief's campaign trail leads to polar ice-cap - Newspaper Edition - Times Online
DAVID CAMERON is to interrupt his local election campaign in order to go on a fact-finding mission to northern Norway to examine the disappearing polar ice-caps.
The Conservative leader will be travelling by dog sled to the remote research station of Ny-Alesund, accompanied by a BBC film crew, ... to see the glacier retreating because of global warming.
A Tory spokeswoman said that by going on the trip during the run-up to the local elections, Mr Cameron, who told the spring conference on Saturday that he wanted to lead a “green revolution”, was re- affirming his commitment to the environment.
As it has been decided the glacier is "retreating becasue of global warming" already I'm not sure what facts there are left for him to find that he doesn't already know. Though maybe he will discover that real fur is warmer than fake fur. Is there any tired old bandwagon that "Dave" isn't jumping on?