The end of civilization as we know it, is not at hand. Dire warnings on climate change issued by Al Gore, based on an extreme set of computer predictions, are a dead issue. So is the credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the UN committee that tried to bring credibility to the predictions with claims that its views represent a consensus among scientists on global warming.
The problem with the alleged scientific consensus is that it has always been a half-truth; or less than half, depending on how you calculate. We are in a natural warm period. That’s true, but Gore, and other activists – including the IPCC – stepped over the boundary when giving the impression that scientific consensus supported a list of scary predictions intended to promote political action, as well as the claim that the primary cause of global warming is human pollution, especially in the form of carbon dioxide – CO2. Ice has been melting; but since a warm period is pretty much opposite an ice-age, that is what one would expect. Polar bears are still killing and eating seals, happily I suppose.
In the scientific debate, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the last decade of real temperature data. Reality just hasn’t held with the IPCC predictions. Not only has it not gotten hotter at an increasing rate, as Al Gore’s presentations with absolute certainty predicted, it just hasn’t gotten hotter. CO2 has been increasing but there’s nothing to suggest that it’s a dangerous substance. The evidence actually contradicts the idea that it is a major contributor to warming. There’s more CO2 but it’s not getting hotter. You don’t have cause and effect if you don’t get the predicted effect. The so-called “global warming skeptics” have won. Al Gore and the IPCC are wrong.
Data over the past decade is not in fact, the first to be out of sync with the IPCC models. Scientists have been pointing to cooling periods as well as data inaccuracies, poor analysis, and misrepresentations for years. These scientists simply weren’t counted in Al Gore’s idea of scientific consensus. It’s been understood for decades; in order to matter in the politics of global warming, you had to get on-board. That of course, created a conspiracy rather than getting to the truth.
The IPCC’s credibility has been shattered. The debate can no longer be thought of as involving two groups of well-intentioned scientists with different data, theories, and predictions. If that were so, the IPCC would be admitting the significance of new data and assuring the public that they have no real evidence that the climate future will be as scary as they had previously claimed. That is exactly what scientists have asked them to do (see related article) The IPCC instead claims their predictions have not been proven wrong; they have just not yet been proven right. Nature’s expected behavior has been delayed, according to the IPCC. Why it has been delayed is another scientific mystery awaiting billions more in funding to solve. They’ve given reality another ten years to catch up with their predictions. If we have a very hot summer or two during the next decade – the sort of thing not unknown to human history – one might expect they’ll claim vindication.
And what of Al Gore – self-appointed soothsayer and modern leader of the environmental movement, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize, an Emmy, and other awards for frightening school children with tales of doom? Publicly, he struggles to explain why there are so many determined detractors in discussions of his far-reaching and expensive vision for political action. But, reportedly making millions from his environmental activism, he should be able to contemplate this and other questions in luxury after this swan song of his political career has finally ended.
