Mark Steyn:
The journal Science, which is peer reviewed up the wazoo, has an interesting new study purporting to explain the 17-year “pause” in global warming, and, indeed, predictinghow long it’s likely to continue:
The “pause” in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists.
Really? Why would that be? Well, the study suggests that there is a natural variability in the global climate that leads to three-decade warming periods followed by three-decade cooling periods:
The cycle naturally produces periods of roughly 30 years in which heat is stored near the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, leading to warmer temperatures, followed by roughly 30 years in which it is stored in the depths, causing cooler surface temperatures, it suggests…
“When the internal variability that is responsible for the current hiatus switches sign, as it inevitably will, another episode of accelerated global warming should ensue,” the study concludes.
Prof Ka-Kit Tung of the University of Washington, one of the report’s authors, said: “Historically the cool period lasted 20 to 35 years. The current period already lasted 15 years, so roughly there [are] 10 more years to go.”
No disrespect to Professor Ka-Kit Tung, but I felt vaguely that I’d read about this climate cycle – natural variability, 30-year cooling periods, 30-year warming periods – somewhere before …oh, years ago, it was. But for the life of me I couldn’t recall which eminent climate scientist had advanced the proposition. And then I remembered. It was IPCC lead author, Nobel Laureate and Fellow of the Royal Society Professor Mark Steyn just over five years ago:
If you mean the argument on “global warming,” my general line is this: For the last century, we’ve had ever-so-slight warming trends and ever-so-slight cooling trends every 30 years or so, and I don’t think either are anything worth collapsing the global economy over.
Things warmed up a bit in the decades before the late Thirties. Why? I dunno. The Versailles Treaty? The Charleston?
Then from 1940 to 1970 there was a slight cooling trend. In its wake, Lowell Ponte (who I believe is an expert climatologist and, therefore, should have been heeded) wrote his bestseller, The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?
From 1970 to 1998 there was a slight warming trend, and now there’s a slight cooling trend again. And I’m not fussed about it either way.
Now I don’t consider myself a big credentialed expert or anything. I simply looked at a graph Michael E Mann hadn’t been anywhere near and drew the obvious conclusion. Gave it two minutes’ thought, if that. The reason it’s taking climate science so much longer to draw that obvious conclusion is because ideology and the ideological enforcers like Mann got in the way.
Consider, for example, the context in which I made my 30-year-hot-30-year-cool observation half-a-decade back. I’d written a column in which I remarked en passant:
Gotta love Steyn. I wish Mark Levin would use him as a guest fill in like Rush Limbaugh does. Steyn always fights for freedom of speech, thus he gets hauled into court. He did a beautiful job defending himself against hate speech in Ontario and British Columbia. Now he’s defending himself against the Mann made climate mullah. Its free speech versus the use of courts to silence debate. Should be fun. I’m thinking of parting with a few shekels to help his cause.
peas porridge hot – peas porridge cold — let me know before 9 days are up! — this whole crapola is over the dufuses in the Universities extorting tax money for “research”