It’s all over the news; we’ve gone about 17 years without any meaningful increase in global temperatures, and the experts are now declaring we’re in the middle of a “pause” based on factors they think maybe they can explain and maybe they can’t; the consensus seems to be to try to explain it away by the oceans, but this is as sloppy as anything they ever accused the skeptics of.
They’re now suggesting that it may be 10 years before temperatures resume their supposed escalation–10 years being the classic prediction people use when they have no real idea, because it sounds reasonably in the foreseeable future but in reality, in 10 years no one will remember you predicted something 10 years ago. And a lot of these people will be retired by that point and won’t really have to directly answer for anything they might have got horribly wrong all those years ago.
Those who expressed skepticism all along were viciously attacked, mocked, in some cases careers ruined, as “anti-science” and “denialists” all for saying “hold on a second.” And no, those who accused pro-Global Warming scientists were not “just as guilty”; one side held most of the money and power, the other was little but a bunch of upstarts saying the Emperor appeared to possibly be missing some clothing, and they were severely punished for daring to hint that maybe there was some problem with those fancy garments.
You can read a pretty good summary of where we are now here on Forbes.
Yes, the skeptical upstarts got a little bit of money here and there from vested interests themselves, but it was dwarfed by the money gotten by the establishment who declared Ex Cathedra that they had The Truth.
Money pollutes science. It just does. So once there’s a strong vested monetary or political interest in one side or the other of a hypothesis–as there always was here–you have to work more diligently than ever to focus on the data, and making that data as transparent as possible, and predictable, falsifiable results, not what you want to believe.
Maybe there still is warming caused by humans. If so, those who say so should be making their assertions with a great deal more humility and reflection on the possibility that they may be wrong and that in being wrong they can potentially cause damage too. We can only hope they do, anyway.
Those of you who called everyone who had any doubts crackpots, lunatics, “science denialists,” whatever? You lost the plot on how science is supposed to work, which is by testing and questioning and probing and debating and transparency and reproducible predictions. Instead you turned it into a religion with Bishops and Imams who were Not To Be Questioned lest the Wrathful Gods of Climate Change should destroy humanity.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The history of science is filled with this kind of closed-minded bullying of doubters and skeptics. Why would we think human nature has changed now in our supposedly more enlightened age?
In any case, one thing’s for certain: The Climate Change establishment has its tail between its legs. Good. It’s needed it for some time. Now I hope they keep studying the climate, and start giving more respect to dissent and skepticism, and allow much greater transparency in how they collect their data and how they do their calculations.
Dean Esmay is the author of Methuselah’s Daughter. He has contributed to Dean’s World, Huffington Post, A Voice for Men, Pajamas Media. Neither left nor right wing, neither libertarian nor socialist.