This is really a note to myself in the hope that I can refer back to it and say: “yes it’s over”. The question is: “what evidential base can we use to claim: ‘the war is over’ given that it is more than likely this scam will just fade out of public interest leaving a small but vociferous bunch of nutters trying to cry wolf at every new weather event”.

Global temperature drops

This would be a clear undeniable end to “global warming”, but it isn’t a good measure for several reasons. First, whilst natural variation may give us a helping hand and a cold dose of reality, it may equally give us a dose of warming. Indeed, given the nature of climate variation, there is almost as much chance of further warming as there is of cooling, so cooling is enough to end the scam but not a necessary condition to end the scam.

Press interest in “global warming” drops below “peak oil”.

As reading an article on peak oil and trying to edit Wikipedia global warming to include a link and the resultant rudeness and bullying I found by those editing wakipedia was the trigger for me to question my former belief in manmade warming, I personally like this as a measure. The basis of this measure is that most of those profiting from “global warming” will likewise try to profit from “peak oil”, but as one says the problem is “too much” fossil fuel and the “too little”, it involves a “tipping point” as they do a 180degree Uturn and support the other to keep their public-fund income stream going.

However this measure is beginning to worry me. First the first eco-nutters to dip their toes in the peak oil scare don’t find the peak oil scare as attractive as I thought they would (it aligns too much with big-oil … not that that stopped them eco-nuttering to boost the profits of big-oil aka the wind “industry”). Second, it would all fall apart as a measure if there were successful “enerconic” reserves of energy from shale oil. In effect we’d go from “direct oil”, to “indirect” or processed oil (not that oil isn’t processed now to form petroleum).

????

Now I was hoping I’d have some other idea of how to mark “the end” by now but I haven’t.

The eco-nutters all give up

Not a good measure as I can never see Mann, Hansen or any of the NGO eco-nutters giving up their global warming religion and their cushy jobs. Converts to the “faith” never just give up … at least not on the basis of real evidence.

The press declare “it’s over”.

The only time I’ve ever seen the press admit that a scare is over is when there is a specified date like the millennium bug or some doomsday profit(!) when it doesn’t rain volcanic ash on a particular day. As I correctly called the swineflu scare I was able to witness the rise and vanishment of this scare from an impartial view and at no time did I ever hear any press announcement that “it was over”. It just quietly dipped out of public view. Likewise I think global warming is simply going to loose the interest of the public and media and unless there is some spectacular cooling event or some “scientists” actively want to commit professional suicide and admit they and everyone else in the field were gullible idiots, it’s not going to happen. There will always be another weather event around the corner and some journalist desperately seeking to fill a few extra column inches by finding some died-in-crypt profit-of -doom to add those extra pronouncements that it was all the sin of mankind (why do women not get the blame?)

For similar reasons, I don’t think there will ever be a “public poll shows climate scare over”, because, by the time the public have lost all interest in the scare, the press will have lost interest writing about the lack of interest of the public in the (media) generated scare. So whose going to pay for a poll that no one wants to write about?

The scientific consensus

Science doesn’t have a notion of a “consensus”, indeed as soon as someone starts talking about a “consensus” rather than the “evidence”, you know they are not scientists. But as a social phenomena there exists this “consensus”. Originally it was a bit like asking a room full of Whiskas employees which cat food their cats prefer, and not surprisingly a high (95%) agreed that their cats preferred Whiskas (because if they didn’t like Whiskas, their owners couldn’t afford to have a cat). But could it be turned around? Could there e.g. be a real poll of all scientists (not just those profiting from the scam) to assess what the “scientific” consensus was on manmade global warming? Well, obviously most people would accept that the theory suggests mankind has some kind of influence, whether through changing landuse or other forms, it is almost inevitable that we have changed the climate at least marginally. So what would be an impartial question?

Do you consider that a majority of the apparent warming in the 20th century was due to the release of manmade CO2?

Is the climate currently showing warming?

Do you consider the level of climate variation seen in the 20th-21st century is significantly greater than natural variation?

Did Climate science up till 2011(ish) enhance or diminish the general reputation of science as providing accurate information for policy makers.

This reverse “consensus” might work, but it relies on someone to spend the time and effort to undertake this poll, and given the limited resources of the sceptics, if it ever happens, it won’t be predictable when it happens and even if it does happen, it won’t be a decisive conclusion because the sample will be too few to make it meaningful.

The majority of scientific papers against.

It’s difficult to put an expression on this. Real science isn’t propaganda. So real science (unlike climate propaganda) doesn’t come out with some tangible “yes/no” answer on the climate. Real science will always accept that mankind does have some influence, it just won’t invent mythical “climate multipliers” nor run super-computer models on just hot air inventions. And, it certainly won’t print ream after ream of the nonsense speculation on doomsday outcomes of warming. But just because real science must eventually win out on the corrupt climate doomsday propaganda, it doesn’t mean there will be a measurable change. Its a very fine matter of degree: the degree to which those printing the papers interpret beyond the facts. In the past that interpretation has gone so far beyond the facts that it was like a bridge of interpretation built on interpretation on interpretation all built over nothingness except a very flimsy foundation that in no way could support the bridge that had been built – except by the propaganda of those involved.

But you can’t measure “scientific integrity”, you can’t measure “appropriate conservatism” in science. It’s something you can “feel” if you understand the science, but not something you can measure.

The sceptics give up

One possible measure is the paradoxical one that the “sceptics” give up. It’s a sad fact, but I doubt any of those who have worked so hard to dispel the global warming myth will ever get much thanks when it is over. It is almost inevitable if the scam fades out the way I think, that their future will be one of diminishing interest, fewer and fewer sceptics willing to do the work to create the blogs and less and less media interest. Indeed, it seems almost inevitable that some sceptic will feel very very angry that they have personally sacrificed so much only to find they are being ignored even as the world accepts the truth of what they have been saying.

At the end of the scam the warmists will walk away with huge publicly paid pensions ready to enjoy retirement, whilst the sceptics will end up with ruined careers and little to show for their effort except diminishing public interest: a victory on which they personally will have no chance to capitalise.

So, could e.g. “the end of WUWT” mark the end of the scam? Obviously we can’t publicly say this is what we mark as the end, as that would allow us to manufacture the end, and when it does happen, the few remaining eco-nutters will always react in the belief that the end of scepticism means the world has accepted their view, so it will never be a public ending. It can’t be a public victory, but will it be the real end of the climate wars?

The next scam

As global warming was largely created in order to supply a never ending desire by newspapers to add column inches to the latest weather event, the need will always exist for some kind of “explanation” for the inexplicable. Could there exist another “explanation” aka scam, which will give these journalists (and public) the added interest in these news stories that they need?

YES THAT’S IT!!

That is the measure I need. It is the media reaction to those drip drip stories of a “once in a decade”, “worst” or whatever weather events. We’ve already seen global warming dropped from the US tornado stories, but perhaps the clearest measure of the failing scam is the number of times “global warming” is given as the “explanation” for the devastation on the next extreme weather event.

Oh what a horrible metric! First extreme weather is by its very nature rare. Second it is extremely variable covering all things from storms to drought to hail to ice that sank the Titanic. How can the number of times extreme weather is claimed to be “caused” by global warming be turned into a meaningful metric let alone used to proclaim the end of the climate wars?

Time for a coffee!

ADDENDUM

In a real sense, the global warming scare is simply the result of a changing attitude of humans: from a “static climate that was so immense and beyond humans that it was impossible to change” to “a flimsy world: a lifeboat alone in space where we humans wallow in the pollution of our own making”. Sometime around the 1960s with the advent of the extra-terrestrial view of the world, we humans stopped seeing the world from the ground where it appears so huge it dwarfs all our endeavours and began to see the world from the outside looking in to a small planet, alone in the huge emptiness of space.

We also began to learn that climate wasn’t static, that it had changed, and perhaps more importantly, it appeared to change at times human civilisation had changed. Some changes even appeared to be the result of changes like cutting forestry and turning the land into farming and of course Urban heating.

We cannot change that new perception, we cannot put the genie of “human influence on the climate” back in the box, because it simply isn’t possible to say that humans cannot affect the climate. So, whilst the hysteria of the first recorded trend in the climate will diminish with time, as we learn that such events are well within the normal variation the climate, on reflection, we will never see the end to the “climate change and even man made climate change caused…” newspaper stories.

Return of common sense.

Grumble frumble, grumble.Realistically there’s as much chance of further natural warming as cooling and either way the press will not now stop referring to the climate; even if it changes to cooling, surely it will still be the “cause” of every new climate extreme. Even climate “stability” will be seen as “unusual” now that we understand the climate does change.

Perhaps, there is no real end in sight. Perhaps the best we can hope is that over the next few decades as we learn to stop fearing the new insights (aka terrible phenomena) shown to us by being able to measure the huge power and unstoppable face of earth’s natural climate variability changes – in the time it takes us to grow to appreciate that change is natural and not nearly as bad as suggested – we can only hope that we haven’t been so scared witless by the doomsday merchants that we haven’t irreparably damaged our economies, societies or worse gone to war over the “number of climate scientists on the head of a pin”.

Note to self: Is this part of a bigger struggle. The concept of a deterministic human ability to control, struggling against the concept of a passive human nature to endure? Is it a philosophical movement based on the premise that “humans can control everything if they put their mind to it”, being applied to the climate. Is the need perhaps the other way around to what it seems: that science needs to show that humans can control the climate because that way we need scientists to show us how to use that control, whereas if we are simply passive recipients of what the climate throws at us, what is the point of scientists?