An emerging truth

Thursday, 10th April 2008

[UPDATE: A technical glitch meant that this article was originally posted twice. The duplicate has now been deleted and all the comments made on it transferred to this thread. The transferred comments are time-stamped from between 9:16am and 9:31am, 10th April]

There is now unequivocal evidence that the temperature of the planet is dropping like a stone. As the DailyTech site reports:

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASAGISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. A compiled list of all the sources can be seen...The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years.

Here’s some other data you may not have seen. The troposphere hasn’t warmed for the past five years. And the oceans haven’t warmed for five years either, which has got this poor NPR reporter scratching his head, poor chap:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them. This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

And here is Ross McKittrick (who exposed the fundamental flaw in the research underpinning the whole of MMGW theory, the hockey-stick curve whose upward warming trend was achieved by omitting several hundred years of global climate history) revealing that there is an error in groundstation measurements such that past warming as measured by near-surface air has been over-estimated by 100% for over 20 years to 2002 (since when there has been cooling). While at Climate Audit, John Goetz says that the temperature record for 2005-2007 has actually been falsified to produce an upward trend. Crumbs!

Now look at this curious development. The British government, as we know,has swallowed the predictions of man-made global warming and is busily trying to persuade us that it is committed to reducing carbon emissions to counter the threat that we’re all about to fry. Yet HM Treasury has posted on its website a paper about solar cycles, which says:

Based on solar maxima of approximately 50 for solar cycles 24 and 25, a global temperature decline of 1.5°C is predicted to 2020, equating to the experience of the Dalton Minimum.

And it also concludes:

A rural US temperature data set shows that recent and current temperatures remain below the average of the first half of the 20th century.

If the Treasury thinks it is worth putting up on its website a paper forecasting global cooling, why is the British government adopting policies, including green taxes and intrusive lifestyle prescriptiveness, to deal with precisely the opposite eventuality?

Now, you may not know about this sudden deadly chill in the MMGW atmosphere because the BBC hasn’t told you. To be more precise, it did try to report this — but then appears to have altered its report under pressure from a global warming activist. This story by Roger Harrabin, headlined 'Global temperatures “to decrease,” ’ was captured a few hours after it appeared on the BBC website on April 4. Later that day, strange things happened to this story. The headline changed from ‘Global temperature “to decrease” ’ to ‘Global warming “dips this year”; so did the content; but then the headline changed back again to ‘Global temperature “to decrease” ’. Google searches from that day show the two titles with their different time references, although the article is thought to have retained the original time of release throughout on its webpage:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global temperatures 'to decrease' Global temperatures will drop slightly this year due to the effects of La Ninanews.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm 17 hours ago - Similar pages

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Global warming 'dips this year' Global temperatures will drop slightly this year due to the effects of La Nina, UN meteorologists say. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7329799. 6 hours ago - Similar pages stm

Baffled? Here's the explanation. This site proudly reproduced an email exchange between Harrabin and a global warming activist, Jo Abbess, who introduced it with these words:

Climate Changers,

Remember to challenge any piece of media that seems like it's been subject to spin or scepticism. Here's my go for today. The BBC actually changed an article I requested a correction for, but I'm not really sure if the result is that much better. Judge for yourselves...

As you will see from this remarkable exchange, Abbess demanded that Harrabin change his report because it would

play into the hands

of global warming sceptics. Harrabin rebuffed her on the grounds that

We can't ignore the fact that sceptics have jumped on the lack of increase since 1998. It is appearing regularly now in general media.

But when she told him there could be no debate about this because it was

an emerging truth

and threatened to circulate his remarks so that he

might appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics

he caved in and said

Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. We have changed headline and more.

Appalling, no? But then, the headline mysteriously reverted to the original (although the altered text appears not to have done so). Might that have been because he realised to his horror that the email exchange was now in the public domain? (And how — it’s even hit the US in the Glenn Beck show which seemed to show the BBC report had changed yet again from the revised version disclosed in the email exchange.)

It’s an emerging truth all right —but not quite the one Jo Abbess had in mind.

Update, April 10: A publicist for BBC News has asked me to post up the following statement:

A minor change was made to the 'Global temperatures "to decrease'' ' piece on our website to better reflect the science. A few people including the report's authors, the World Meteorological Organisation, pointed out to us that the earlier version had been ambiguous.