Via CNS News.com:
The Earth’s temperature has “plateaued” and there has been no global warming for at least the last 18 years, says Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at the University of Alabama/Huntsville.
Further, when asked why the UN climate models were all wrong, Dr Christy said,
You’re going back to a fundamental question of science that when you understand a system, you are able to predict its behavior. The fact that no one predicted what’s happened in the past 18 years indicates we have a long way to go to understand the climate system and that the way the predictions were wrong were all to one direction, which means the predictions or the science is biased in one direction, toward overcooking the atmosphere.
He went on to describe basing government policy on models which have been shown to be inaccurate as “a fool’s errand”: quite so, especially when we cannot afford unnecessary costs.
Scepticism is the proper scientific attitude. I have expressed it here before, especially here. Because I have previously worked professionally both in software engineering and, obliquely, in thermodynamics, I have always been disappointed when people have generally reacted hysterically to what I thought were reasonable questions about climate science and climate models. As I have written, too many people, often people who should know better, have reduced this debate to dogma in the name of science, which is itself a travesty.
Official and commercial vested interests will no doubt propel public policy in this area for a while longer. I would not expect it to last: if climate science is indeed science, it is time to examine whether it has been falsified by the evidence.
(H/T Guido)
