Friday Climate Update

Just because I don't write about it very often, I don't want readers to get any ideas about me being an adherent to the new religion of Man Made Global Warming.

Nosiree. I am sceptic through and through, and I can spot a canard when it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and adds significantly to my taxes like a duck. (?)

The excellent Englishman runs a story today about a moonbat in Potsdam who, tired of arsing about with sea-level-rise warnings of only a couple of feet, has upped the ante to an impressive 80 metres. Yes, you heard that right, 80 metres. Better read the whole story to get the full dollop of gloom. Oh, and buy a snorkel and flippers while you're at it.

At times like this, a sharp pin is needed to puncture the pomposity and ridicule the high priests of this lunacy. Who better than Mark Steyn? It just so happens that the Request of the Week on his blog turns up an amusing column from 2006, when Al Gore was pushing Tom Hanks and Kate Gymslip aside as he stormed towards Oscar glory with that great movie of his:

Here's an inconvenient truth for "An Inconvenient Truth": Remember what they used to call "climate change"? "Global warming." And what did they call it before that? "Global cooling." That was the big worry in the '70s: the forthcoming ice age. Back then, Lowell Ponte had a huge best seller called The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?

The answer to the first question was: Yes, it had begun. From 1940 to 1970, there was very slight global cooling. That's why the doom-mongers decided the big bucks were in the new-ice-age blockbusters.

And yet, amazingly, we've survived. Why? Because in 1970 the planet stopped its very slight global cooling and began to undergo very slight global warming. So in the '80s, the doom-mongers cast off their thermal underwear, climbed into the leopardskin thongs, slathered themselves in sun cream and wired their publishers to change all references to "cooling" to "warming" for the paperback edition. That's why, if you notice, the global-warming crowd begin their scare statistics with "since 1970," an unlikely Year Zero which would not otherwise merit the significance the eco-crowd invest in it.

But then in 1998 the planet stopped its very slight global warming and began to resume very slight global cooling. And this time the doom-mongers said, "Look, do we really want to rewrite the bumper stickers every 30 years? Let's just call it 'climate change.' That pretty much covers it."

Why did the Earth cool between 1940 and 1970?
Beats me. Hitler? Hiroshima? Maybe we need to nuke someone every couple of decades.

I know, I know, Steyn's not a scientist, and neither am I. But it annoys the hell out of me when the Climate Ayatollahs and their acolytes pretend that there is no longer any serious challenge to the 'consensus view' and that Bjorn Lomborg isn't really a human being.

Beautiful day in Sussex today. Quite warm, too. Oops.