A tipping point: Skepticism goes mainstream…

Worldwide momentum is shifting. With David Rose’s article in the Daily Mail, Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal (“We got it wrong on warming“), and the excellent article by Ross McKitrick in the Financial Post the skeptical message is going mainstream.

The war is by no means over, but the race in media coverage has stepped up a notch. Now, for the first time there is an element of competition, serious newspapers don’t want to be left behind. Editors have realized the skeptics have a case.

In Australia the grand failure of the carbon tax in the recent election is still ripping through the news, the institutions, and the mood. It was a categorical defeat. From comments and emails I know this event was watched around the world.

Roy Spencer, veteran with two decades of experience wonders if this is a turning point too:

“…recent events are quite exceptional.” ” We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations.”

Ross McKitrick, Canada:

“To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades, the next few years will be electrifying. There is a high probability we will witness the crackup of one of the most influential scientific paradigms of the 20th century, and the implications for policy and global politics could be staggering. “…something big is about to happen. Models predict one thing and the data show another. The various attempts in recent years to patch over the difference are disintegrating. “… since we are on the verge of seeing the emergence of data that could rock the foundations of mainstream climatology, this is obviously no time for entering into costly and permanent climate policy commitments based on failed model forecasts. “…what is commonly called the “mainstream” view of climate science is contained in the spread of results from computer models. What is commonly dismissed as the “skeptical” or “denier” view coincides with the real-world observations. Now you know how to interpret those terms when you hear them.

David Rose, UK, talked about the IPCC halving the rate of warming, which was picked up all over the world. He gets criticized for some of the details (with some justification), and clarifies his article to change a “half” to a quarter.

“World’s top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought – and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong”

The failed predictions of the IPCC First Assessment Report

The quote from the first page of the Executive Summary of the Summary for Policy Makers, FAR 1990:1 “Based on current model results, we predict: Under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C – 0.5°C)” [IPCC FAR summary] There is no weasel-room here: even if emissions are stabilized at 1990 levels temperatures should rise by 0.2C per decade for the first few decades. See the whole scanned IPCC page in context here





Photo adapted from Ron Neibrugge’s beautifully crisp original at Wild Nature Images

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