The Consensus is Collapsing

For the last two years I have written articles expressing my skepticism of anthropological global warming. Those articles were inevitably met with some resistance by many who treat Al Gore’s words as gospel, they told me “the debate is over”. Some two years later I still find myself in a position where it is necessary to remind readers that there has been no such debate, and the so called consensus referred to by Al Gore is nothing more than a myth.

The list of scientists who disagree with the politically endorsed theory of anthropological global warming continues to grow. This week it was announced that The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists has officially reversed it’s stance on global warming.

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,” There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Monckton will be added to the very long list of people who are referred to by Al Gore as ‘deniers’ for having the nerve to challenge global warming dogma. Monckton makes note of the increase in temperatures on Mars, Jupiter and Pluto, and attributes those temperature variations to the increased solar activity we have witnessed over the last 70 years. It is that increased activity which has caused the moderate warming period we have just completed, as is evidenced by the fact that no significant warming has taken place for the last decade, a period in which solar activity has been decreasing.

Ed Morrissey points out this morning that “one of the authors who built Australia’s compliance protocol for the Kyoto Accords admits what most of us suspected all along — that the scientific community jumped to conclusions:

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

I hope the inconvenient truth that the consensus Al Gore loves to talk about is none existent does not prevent him from releasing his sequel. I haven’t seen a good comedy in quite some time, and watching Al Gore continue to use the same talking points despite the scientific evidence that he got it totally wrong would certainly be amusing.

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