Monday, August 13, 2007

Global warming? Look at the numbers

Lots of places where you can read about the revised "rankings" for warmest years on record, this is one of the more accessible and easily understood of many.  It is important to note several things:
  • there is no temperature trend now that the correct figures are being used
  • the corrections only came about because of the activities associated with the Climate Audit blog of Steve McIntyre, who previously exposed the myth of the Hockey Stick temperature graph, and
  • few (none?) of the usual global warming zealots have had the good grace to acknowledge that the science "does not track", "have the traction" or otherwise fit any of the contemporary public policy buzzwords implying doom and gloom as contended by advocates over the past decade or so.
These data really do represent an Inconvenient Truth: global warming is a myth. 
 
Climate is changing: always has, always will.  Humans are modifying the climate, but not disastrously so and the changes do not constitute a prevailing environmental crisis. Get over it and focus on issues that do constitute a real problem to human survival, like: development; clean drinking water, and; the eradication of diseases such as malaria and AIDS.
 
The difficultly these problem pose is that they are real, and thus actions to mitigate them are measurable and discernable.  Global warming as a non-real issue is perfect for government bureaucracies, advocates and other associated policy actors, as any actions can claim effectiveness as their actual impact can not actually be measured against a non-existent baseline problem. 
 
Ecomyths are nothing if not self-perpetuating, self-justifying and self-aggrandizing for those advocating them.