> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html
>
>
> Climate facts to warm to
>
> Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008
>
> CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the
> notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
>
> Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping
> point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a
> remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael
> Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of
> Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in
> public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will
> ignore it at their peril.
>
> Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"
>
> She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as
> your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference,
> then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd
> expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide
> levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming
> down over the last 10 years."
>
> Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
>
> Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel
> on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the
> apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises
> that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have
> plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if
> carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given
> carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures
> should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's
> being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very
> significant."
>
> Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we?
> Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the
> global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like
> that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually
> never reported, which is extraordinary."
>
> Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the
> greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their
> case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though
> the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument
> from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to
> explain the (temperature) dip?"
>
> Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are
> compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to
> some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that,
> yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot
> of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming
> from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.
>
> "There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe
> we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar
> activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
>
> Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I
> understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our
> understanding of how climate works?"
>
> Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it
> enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on
> cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is
> that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will
> result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive
> feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great
> data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the
> opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are
> compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and
> you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
>
> Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was
> assumed in the climate models?"
>
> Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being
> disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble
> digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're
> acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the
> models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models
> really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they
> will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a
> consequence of carbon dioxide."
>
> Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this
> could beconsiderable ..."
>
> Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are
> enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just
> coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and
> (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is
> published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock
> at this point."
>
> If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the
> global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more
> interesting.
>
> A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most
> heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned
> professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed.
> Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.
>
> With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial
> gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the
> next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that
> is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The
> delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help
> save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense
> it was all along.
>
> The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way
> towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their
> carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with
> Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.
>
> The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of
> regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have
> to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find
> something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats
> planning to accommodate "climate refugees".
>
> Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the
> ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to
> junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast
> speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to
> kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy
> challenge of our times.
>
> It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.
>
> THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on
> March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a
> slightly longer version of the same piece.
>
> The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling
> paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a
> climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding
> on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their
> expression in the rigorous use of statistics".
>
> What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following:
> "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to
> post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact
> or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress
> good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely
> rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the
> latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the
> prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once
> said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or
> expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions
> fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community,
> and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but
> the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would
> be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a
> religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"
>
> The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version
> of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and
> there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.
>
> Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I
> wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The
> Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at
> "absorbing inconvenient fact"?