Category: Points of Information

German politicians openly admit they are trying to squelch any mention in the IPCC report of the recent 15 year pause in global temperature rise.

Despite resistance from many researchers, the German ministries insist that it is important not to detract from the effectiveness of climate change warnings by discussing the past 15 years’ lack of global warming. Doing so, they say, would result in a loss of the support necessary for pursuing rigorous climate policies. “Climate policy needs the element of fear,” [German Green Party politician Hermann] Ott openly admits. “Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic.”

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research would prefer to leave any discussion of the global warming hiatus entirely out of the new IPCC report summary. “In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years,” claims one delegate participating in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister Johanna Wanka of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Ministry for the Environment’s identical stance: “Climate fluctuations that don’t last very long are not scientifically relevant.” [emphasis mine]

I must admire the Green Party politician for admitting that his approach to science and politics is the use of fear. He might be the most honest, if fascist, politician in the world!

The IPCC and the climate science community should be warned, however. Their reputation for honest science is already in the tank. If the IPCC report to be released later this week makes believe that the climate pause hasn’t happened their ability to persuade anyone will be gone forever.

The global warming scientists at the IPCC struggle to explain the lack of warming.

Though scientists don’t have any firm answers, they do have multiple theories. Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn’t enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said. [emphasis mine]

This theory, that the oceans are absorbing all the heat, is one of the new favorite explanations for the lack of warming by advocates of global warming. However, as this article correctly notes, we have no good data to support it, and even fewer theories to explain it.

The truth is really summed up by the article’s last paragraph:

“This unpredicted hiatus just reflects the fact that we don’t understand things as well as we thought,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder and vocal critic of the climate change establishment. “Now the IPCC finds itself in a position that a science group never wants to be in. It’s in spin management mode.”