Und hier noch einmal eine Analyse von David Whitehouse, einem bekannten britischen Wissenschafts-Publizisten und Naturfilmer:

?One would have thought that any dispassionate and scientifically

rigorous look at the general temperature standstill since 2001, and now

a slight fall in the average annual global temperature record would

provide pause for thought about what is really going on, and, whatever

side of the fence you sit, perhaps a humble appreciation that we do not

by any means know as much about the complexities of the climate as some

say we do.

And so it happened. The headline in the Guardian said;

?2008 will be coolest year of the decade; Global average for 2008

should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence

that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists? 

If I may quote from the article;

?Prof Myles Allen at Oxford University who runs the

climateprediction.net website, said he feared climate sceptics would

overinterpret the figure. ?You can bet your life there will be a lot of

fuss about what a cold year it is. Actually no, its not been that cold

a year, but the human memory is not very long, we are used to warm

years,? he said, ?Even in the 80s [this year] would have felt like a

warm year.?

And 2008 would have been a scorcher in Charles Dickens?s time –

without human-induced warming there would have been a one in a hundred

chance of getting a year this hot. ?For Dickens this would have been an

extremely warm year,? he said. On the flip side, in the current climate

there is a roughly one in 10chance of having a year this cool.?

Overinterpret? Is that a new way of saying don?t look at all the relevant data because it might be inconvenient?

As I pointed out, this is not telling the whole story, nor even

putting it into a proper context. The important point evaded is not

that 2008 would have been hot for Dickens but how hot is it with

respect to the current warming spell. Nobody is arguing that the past

decade is not warmer than previous ones and that the world¹s glaciers

and ecosystems are not reacting to it. If 2008 is the coldest year

since 2001 and the global average temperature didn?t change at all

between 2001 2007 one should ask why! Talking about 2008 on its own and

comparing it to Victorian times is misleading.

Then a few days later in the Guardian the environmental campaigner

George Monbiot wrote, in response to the first article that ?In the

physical world global warming appears to be spilling over into runaway

feedback.?

Really? What a load of nonsense. It?s statements like these that

make me wonder if I am either living in the same physical world and if

we need real world data at all?

It is said in that article that it?s all right because the Met

Office predicted that 2008 would be cool because of the la Nina effect.

What it didn?t say is that the previous year was predicted by the Met

Office to be the warmest ever and it wasn¹t. la Ninas come along

regularly and it?s no great scientific achievement to say that when one

occurs the world will cool. A failed prediction of warming however is

highly significant especially given the faith put in computer

modelling.

Also this supposed explanation is not in itself adequate. If the

predicted cooling by la Nina had not occurred then 2008 would probably

have been the same temperature (given the uncertainties) as every year

since 2001 and that in itself would require explanation.

Later on in the Monbiot article we have, as I predicted, the tired

old cliché about ?professional deniers employed by fossil fuel

companies.? Where I wonder are their counterparts, the professional

campaigners whose vested interests make them see a runaway warming

world despite what the real world the data says?

I am broadly in favour of the global warming CO2 hypothesis but I

know it is just that, a hypothesis – and that needs testing against

real observations in the physical world. If it isn?t, then it?s not

science.?

gefunden bei ACHGUT mit Dank an Dirk Maxeiner

Michael Limburg EIKE