Upside-Down Thermometer

The BBC reports:

Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.

The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C. [emphasis added]

Stop and re-read these paragraphs, and let the full impact sink in.  Global temperatures have not risen since 1998... yet "climate experts" insist we are still in a long-term warming trend.  Actually, they say we are clearly in a long-term warming trend, no less.  This despite the fact that for ten whole years, there has been no warming.

Despite the absence of warming - that is, despite it not, in fact, getting warmer - the last decade, they say, was the warmest on record.

Now, not being a professional climatologist, perhaps I am not able to fully appreciate the profundity here, but can anyone explain how it could be the warmest on record, without in fact warming?  Are they perchance consulting Bill Clinton's dictionary to find the meanings of the words?

A ten-year trend is not a long-enough term for it to have any meaning.  Full and conclusive proof of global warming can be had by examining the entire hundred years since the beginning of the 20th Century, over which time, as the article says, the earth has gotten warmer by the heart-palpitating total of three-fourths of a degree.  Three whole fourths!

Masters of the art of understatement, the BBC drily points out that this news is "prompting some to question climate change theory."  Imagine that!  Some people have the temerity to ask whether the fact that the earth is not getting warmer might be proof that the earth is, in fact, not warming.

The trouble with global warming is that it's commonly misunderstood as a scientific issue.  It's not.  As we've reported extensively before, there is not the slightest shred of unimpeachable proof that there is any warming, much less that it is the fault of humans, nor yet that it would hurt anything if it were true.

But we continue to be told that every weather event which takes place - a storm here, a dry spell there, extra-cold winters in the entire Northern Hemisphere - is one more proof that "the debate is over."

Oh, the debate is over, all right - but on the other side.  Global warming is a lie, nothing more, and nothing less.

In an odd way, it almost seems like the environmentalists are beginning to realize this.  More and more, what was previously called "global warming" is now being called "climate change."  Talk about covering your bases - no matter what happens, climates by definition change, so they can't be wrong!

Greenpeace has finally started to change their tune on the issue of ethanol and other biofuels, which do more harm to the environment than the normal Saudi stuff; their founder has changed his mind concerning the benefits of nuclear power.  It'll be quite the event when Greenpeace stops protesting global warming and starts protesting global cooling again, won't it?

Well, maybe not.

In George Orwell's famous book 1984, the nation of Oceania has been at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia.  During a political event, the speaker suddenly changes in mid-speech to referring the other way around, allied with Eurasia against Eastasia instead.  Rather than express shock at the sudden change, the only reaction of the audience is to note in horror that the posters are all wrong, and to tear them down.  Problem solved!  "We've always been at war with Eastasia."