Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
increase in globally averaged temperatures of 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius over the period
1990-2100.'
A rise in temperatures of up to six degrees this century? Cue terrifying scenarios.
ProfessorJamesLovelock,theworld-famousGaiaguru,warnedin2006we'dbewiped
out: 'Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people
that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.'
Professional alarmist Professor Tim Flannery in 2007, at the height of the warming
scare and four years before being appointed Australia's Chief Climate Commissioner, said
the certainty of big rises in temperature meant we faced mass extinctions. 'Three degrees
will be a disaster for all life on earth … It could be worse than this—there's a 10 per cent
chance of truly catastrophic rises in temperatures, so we're looking at six degrees or so.'
Journalist Mark Lynas was inspired to write the bestseller
Six Degrees
, predicting an
apocalypse. This in turn inspired Channel Nine's
A Current Affair
in 2007 to show huge
ballsoffiresmashingintocitiesbytheendofthecentury,asanarratorintoned,'Thisissix
degrees. Flash floods. Gas and methane fireballs racing across the globe with the power of
atomic bombs. Life on earth ends in apocalyptic storms.'
But a curious thing happened. As the years went by, the world's atmospheric
temperatures stubbornly refused to rise. In fact, by 2014 that pause in the warming had
lasted sixteen or seventeen years, depending on which data sets are consulted.
The leaked
Climategate
emails showed growing alarm at this pause among the very
IPCC climate scientists most responsible for the warming scare—an alarm they kept
amongst themselves. For example, Dr. Phil Jones, director of the Climate Research Unit
at the University of East Anglia, privately confessed in 2005, 'The scientific community
would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998.
Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn't statistically significant …'
Dr. Kevin Trenberth in 2009 wondered 'where the heck is global warming?' adding,
'Thefactisthatwecan'taccountforthelackofwarmingatthemomentanditisatravesty
that we can't.' Jones in 2009 counselled against panic, 'Bottom line: the“no upward trend”
has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.' The trend of no warming has
since exceeded that fifteen-year mark.
But whatever their private doubts, the warmists kept denying publicly that their
predictions really were bust. In 2008, for instance, Britain's warmist Met Office insisted
'we expect that warming will resume in the next few years'. It hasn't, of course.
In 2012, Professor Matthew England of the NSW Climate Change Research Centre
even appeared on the ABC's
Q&A
to rebuke former Industry Minister Nick Minchin for
simply saying what the Met had already admitted—that the planet's atmosphere had not
warmed since 1998 by any statistically significant amount.
