"that's what sceptics have been saying"

"Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

That is just one of many stunning admissions in a transcript of a radio interview between Australian Journalist Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, "a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs." Christopher Pearson publishes it in The Australian and suggests "Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril."

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth still warming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

It gets worse from there for the warmies. No doubt Ms. Marohasy will be outed as a corporate shill for the petro industry.

Pearson closes with some overly optimistic suggestions that the fall of global warming hysteria will usher in a new era of reason and freedom:

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

I'm not so sanguine. I think recycling has been substantially discredited, yet my city council last year voted to force it onto all municipal residents.

This won't go away, but with a little luck maybe we could get a Republican Presidential candidate to disavow it.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe Posted by jk at March 23, 2008 12:39 PM