World is warming. Pope is ex-Buddhist.

Over on Wattsupwiththat, the noise of furious back-pedalling is reaching truly deafening levels (e.g. ‘World is warming. Pope is Catholic.’). However, Anthony Watts has been caught out spectacularly (see below) and is now refusing to explain himself pending the publication of some new book. Therefore, when he is not attacking me for having made him look silly (because he mistook my spoof of Robert Henson’s book as one of my own that I was trying to publicise – and chose to be insulted by its spoof title), he is very busy disputing that climate change sceptics have been, for a very long time, deliberately denying as many things as possible; not least that the planet is warming at all. For example: — “…contrary to conventional wisdom – there does not exist today a general scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from rising levels of carbon dioxide. On the contrary, most scientists now accept the fact that actual observations from earth satellites show no climate warming whatsoever…” (The Leipzig Declaration [1995]) — “… there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change… human-caused climate change is not a global crisis …” (The Manhattan Declaration [2008]) — “Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and uni-directionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant ‘global warming’ in the 20th century…” (Daleo, J and Watts, A [2010]) The latter comment (in January 2010) does not sit well alongside what Watts posted on his Blog last Friday: “The Earth is warmer than it was 100-150 years ago. But that was never in contention – it is a straw man argument. The magnitude and causes are what skeptics question”! But why did I get into this row in the first place? Well because Watts criticises Muller and the BEST team for not observing normal peer review process when most of what passes for science in contrarian quarters is never peer reviewed and never published in reputable, specialist, scientific journals. Then, when challenged regarding the post-1960 warming confirmed by Muller/BEST, he pointed to the less-consistent but nonetheless overall rising trend since 1800 (he seems to forget that the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-1700’s). Clearly, those in denial about what we are doing to our planet are also in denial about being in denial (you are not even allowed to use the word – in any context whatsoever – on WUWT) but, surely, what nobody can deny is that the same 1% that caused the Financial Meltdown are – like swans floating serenely by – paddling furiously behind-the-scenes to keep the climate change denial bandwagon on the rails; by which they maintain the status quo and maintain “business as usual” consumption of fossil fuels. What they don’t want anyone to admit, least of all people like Muller, is that anthropogenic climate change is happening; it is not a false alarm, scam, or hoax. Furthermore, it is not anti-Western, anti-Capitalist, anti-progress, or anti-human; and it is not a UN-WMO-IPCC conspiracy to install worldwide socialist government… It is just an inevitable consequence of unrestrained and ill-considered fossil fuel consumption and of unsustainable development. As such, delaying doing something about it is utterly short-sighted and counter-productive. In the long-run, the later we try and tackle the problem the harder it will be to fix. It is perfectly analogous to getting into debt and not making any attempt to pay off your creditors. So, with that in mind, tomorrow, I will look at exactly what Muller/BEST have admitted is happening – by comparing their new graph with the MBH98 Hockey Stick.

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