Oops! I Did it Again

Here is another example of how shaky the data is upon which climate modelers have built their global warming story:

Global temperatures did not dip sharply in the 1940s as the conventional graph shows, scientists believe.

They say an abrupt dip of 0.3C in 1945 actually reflects a change in how temperatures were measured at sea.

Until 1945, most readings were taken by US ships; but after the war, UK vessels resumed measurements, and they took the sea's temperature differently.

Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers say this does not affect estimates of long-term global warming.

from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/science/nature/7423527.stm

Notice that these scientists still swear allegiance to "global warming" even when they admit that some of the data is bad. I believe that it is career suicide for any climatologist to question "global warming". Note: I'm not saying that there isn't a case for global warming. What I am saying is that I believe that a true, open, scientific discussion of the facts is not possible due to the charged political environment in which the scientists work. I believe that those who question the political dogma find it nearly impossible get any funding. So there is tremendous pressure to "toe the line". I believe that carbon emissions do lead to global warming, but I don't believe that the basic science is solid enough to project the future. I believe that the model projections are mistakenly a simplistic linear extrapolations from the past. The models ignores the very likely switch to alternative energy in the near future. I'm not saying that humans will stop dumping carbon into the atmosphere. What I am saying is that the projections of continued growth are wrong. There in fact will probably be a slow dropoff as we switch to other energy sources. Building policies around models that don't have a firm grounding in reality -- both real data and more importantly in solid projections of technological change and human behavourial response -- is foolish.

I've been down this road before. In the late 1960s Paul R. Ehrlich got everybody in a lather over a population crash in his book "The Population Bomb". In the 1970s I taught high school with materials telling kids that "the end of oil" had come and that we had to look forward to a bleak future. During this decade The Club of Rome was infamous for its linear extrapolations of resource depletion and project imminent doom. In the 1980s were were first told, in a cover story by Time Magazine, that we were all doomed by a horrible plague. Not AIDS! No, they worried people over herpes. At the same time a real plague, AIDS, was spreading. And of course, in due time (the late 1980s), we were told that civilization would collapse due to this unstoppable plague. In the early 1990s there was a brief spring of euphoria with the collapse of communism, but the 2000s have brought the pessimists back in full force with projections of a bleak future of eternal terrorism and, of course, the end of oil.

I'm not saying that we should all be pollyannish and deny there are pitfalls and problems. But I'm a great believer in Julian Simon's The Ultimate Resource, i.e. human ingenuity will help us overcome problems. Sure civilizations can collapse but they don't have to if humans cooperate and innovate and overcome problems. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but I've seen too many pessimists glorying in dire predictions. Sure, admit the problems, but don't revel in bleak predictions that paralyze you from acting intelligently. And, most important, don't let yourself be stampeded by some "obvious" truth. Here's a bit of an antidote from Freeman Dyson: