Greenhouse Global Warming? Informed Skepticism Wisest Course

It has almost become something of a joke when some "global warming" conference has to be cancelled because of a snowstorm or bitterly cold weather.

But stampedes and hysteria are no joke -- and creating stampedes and hysteria has become a major activity of those hyping a global warming "crisis."

They mobilize like-minded people from a variety of occupations, call them all "scientists" and then claim that "all" the experts agree on a global warming crisis.

Their biggest argument is that there is no argument.

A whole cottage industry has sprung up among people who get grants, government agencies who get appropriations, politicians who get publicity and the perpetually indignant who get something new to be indignant about. It gives teachers something to talk about in school instead of teaching.

Those who bother to check the facts often find that not all those who are called scientists are really scientists and not all of those who are scientists are specialists in climate. But who bothers to check facts these days?__Source

There are a number of reasons, besides the graphic divergence pictured above, to suspect that the High Orthodoxy of Climate Change has taken in large numbers of opportunists and the gullible. For instance, cyclic ocean oscillations can have a huge impact on multi-decadal climate trends, but GCMs cannot accurately capture them.

... remarkably high SOI averages as seen recently and now in February also took place in the past during periods of global cooling as late in the 19th century and in the 50’s and the 70’s as the PDO experimented a negative phase. This strong La Niña event and the behavior of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation may hint the beginning of a new negative phase of the PDO, but is too early to tell and it could be another false indicator as seen in 1999 and 2000. The same could be said about global cooling. The recent trend of global temperature (read Anthony Watts's excellent tracking) can be a brief lapse in the curve of global warming or may indicate the beginning of a long term cooling trend. I entirely agree with WOOD-TV Craig James’ opinion (read more) that this can be "just a noise in the upward trend or is it the start of a downward trend in temperatures". The famous and very competent meteorologist from Grand Rapids tells "it is a little too early to be proclaiming that global warming has ended" and it sounds reasonable to me, but at the same time it is very nice to see that natural forcing and not manmade global warming is driving our planet temperature.___Source__via_NCMediaWatch

Unlike the true believers who flock to the Climate High Orthodoxy, intelligent people reserve the right to be skeptical and to keep an open mind as the data accumulates.

In fact, it is starting to look as if the Climate Orthodoxy's massive media deluge is beginning to backfire.

“Mass media efforts to raise American public concern about climate change - such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and the ‘scientific consensus’ media drumbeat - ironically may be having just the opposite effect, according to a new study appearing in the scientific journal Risk Analysis.”___Source

People are naturally curious, and skeptical. When certain ideas are pounded into their heads so unrelentingly, the more intelligent ones begin to wonder about the reasons for the militant attacks on their senses. Arguments for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) are wearing thin, as they are repeated ad nauseum without satisfactory evidential support. Such growing discontent among the brighter and more skeptical members of the public makes them more likely to consider alternative explanations for climate phenomena.

Despite much evidence relating climatic changes on Earth to solar variability, a physical mechanism responsible for this is still poorly known. A possible link connecting solar activity and climate variations is related to cosmic rays and the physical-chemical changes they produce in the atmosphere. Here we review experimental evidence and theoretical grounds for this rela tion. The cosmic ray – climate link seems to be a plausible climate driver which effectively operates on different time scales, but its exact mechanism and relative importance still remain open questions.____Source

The High Orthodoxy of Climate has the advantage of the media, political, and academic high ground. The Orthodoxy can maintain multi-billion dollar media barrages for the indefinite future. With that kind of public relations and big media firepower, you would think that the skeptics would be "drowned out" and "obliterated" by now. But that would be ignorning the "new media," the internet. The High Orthodoxy may be fighting this century's war with the last century's weapons.

Certainly with intelligent and informed climate discussion as one finds here, here, here, and here, it is unlikely that the Orthodoxy will be able to shut down debate in the foreseeable future.

H/T Tom Nelson