All Things to All Temperatures

It's swings and roundabouts for the global warming set as NASA quietly amends its findings on high temperatures of the last century.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

But the followers of Gaia's prophet Al of Gore can take heart in a study that offers as proof of global warming a model that predicts that nothing will happen until 2014.

What a marvelous thing is global warming. If you have a heat wave, it's proof; if you have a cold snap, it's proof; and if the temperature remains normal, it's proof. It's the Illuminati of climate change. Nothing happens that it can't explain.

Unfortunately, a theory that explains everything explains nothing.

Global warming may be a serious problem for future generations or it may be a bit of overhyped environmentalist propaganda. As a retired archaeologist who spent twenty years dealing with climate change problems on a daily basis I tend toward the latter view and it's my professional opinion that if such warming is occurring it's certainly a natural phenomenon and so gradual that any changes (in any direction) will only be obvious after a century of hindsight. Properly, this is a matter for scientists to study with all diligence and extreme scepticism and for elected officials, not bureaucrats, to address after having the basics of cost/benefits analysis pounded into their time-serving skulls. However, as far as the MSM and the Green movement is concerned, it's the perfect catastrophe because no matter which way the thermometer jumps it's evidence that the End Days Are At Hand and that sinful humanity must Change Their Ways-- preferably according to the diktats of Ingsoc.

Except for the New Aristocracy, of course, who can flit about in their Lear jets and limousines to their heart's content while the peasants make do with rickshaws.

Only fair, you know.