What if it was the Sun?

Rather than carbon dioxide being the be-all and end-all of global temperature, there exist other possible "drivers", such as variations in the sun's activity. The IPCC shows CO2 as the great bete noire:

The Svensmark hypothesis runs like this: Solar wind deflects galactic cosmic rays to a greater or lesser extent. Variation in the arrival of cosmic rays, which create vapour trails, causes variation in cloud cover. More cloud causes cooler days and warmer nights, but the effect of cooler days is the greater. An active sun therefore results in clear skies and a warmer world; a sleepy sun results in cold decades. Since the turn of the millennium our star seems to be going back to the sleepy ways of two centuries ago when there were cool summers and cold winters. Whether the two events - very low sunspots and global cooling - were commected is an open question.

The following truism deserves repeating several times a day: Correlation is not Causality. Let's say it again: Correlation is not causality! Consider the following graph:

Did the rock music cause the oil production or was it the other way round?

Both sceptics and warmists must avoid declaring causality on the shaky grounds of pattern-matching. Pattern-spotting is human: we all do it. Pattern spotting can lead to a reasonable conjecture: "Maybe this is the explanation of that pattern", one might say. And then the real work starts: confirming or refuting the hypothesis. If confirmed, the new science will lead to firm predictions, repeatability, verifiability by others. If Svensmark is right we'll soon know: it'll get darn cold.
Back in 2001 our star looked like this:

The eleven-year cycle observed for centuries seems to have stalled. Here is today's sun:

A cooling sun? If it's true we may get an early confirmation without waiting for sea ice in the English Channel:  the CERN research centre is due to report later in the year. Their CLOUD project is intended to confirm or refute Svensmark.

The Svensmark hypothesis may turn out to be a crock. But carbon dioxide hypothesis - simpler and dumber - has managed to sway multibillion dollar government decisions. Misrepresented as "settled" science, the CO2 hoax has hijacked the agenda. Svensmark, if right, will blow the CO2 hypothesis out of the water and demolish the political rationale behind cap-and-trade and thousands of windmills.

The onus is on the Warmists to prove their hypothesis. As atmospheric CO2 continues to rise and global temperatures since 1998 refuse to, the Global Warming theory is a busted flush. The lack of integrity of the unprincipled scoundrels peddling this mtyh - and their pernicious hidden agenda - prevents them from conceding defeat. The pseudoscientists of the IPCC will stay on the gravy train until an outraged public drags 'em off it.

Ode to Global Warming

(To the melody of I Believed in Father Christmas)

They said that the world was warming,

They said we were going to fry,

They gave us the direst warnings,

Repent for the end is nigh

And I believed in global warming

I fell for a big fat lie

But listen up folks

It’s only a hoax

A joke and a pig in a poke

They priced up our carbon footprints

They filled us with guilt and sin

Indulgences sold to order

To offset the mess we’re in

And I believed in global warming

I fell for a big fat lie

But listen up folks

It’s only a hoax

A joke and a pig in a poke

Aloft with their sacred powers

The priests read the runes of old

The kings from their iv’ry towers

Went off on a quest for gold

Don’t believe in global warming

Don’t fall for a big fat lie

Listen up folks

It’s only a hoax

A joke and a pig in a poke

Carbon Monomania

However did the Greenshirts manage to simplify the mindbogglingly complex field of climate down to a single variable: carbon dioxide? (That is, without being laughed out of town.) A generation ago Benoit Mandelbrot and other founders of Chaos Theory demonstrated that fractal systems must defeat the mightest Kray computer. Blind to the limits so defined, the numpties of the Hockey Team try to guess the weather* in 2100AD based solely on the useful trace gas found in beer.

A tenacious dude called Justthefacts contributed this guest post to the award-winning Watts Up With That website in July 2011. With great stamina he talks us through the many variables which have - or may have - an impact on the climate:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/30/earths-climate-system-is-ridiculously-complex-with-draft-link-tutorial/#more-42464

And the Watermelons** would have us believe that rising CO2 caused the 1975-1998 TWWP***? There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.

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*Weather: something very hard to guess beyond next week. Do not confuse with Climate: the weather at a future date after the career and natural life of the predictor.

**Watermelons: Lapsed Trots who have migrated to environmental extremism: green on the outside and red on the inside.

***Teeny Weeny Warm Period

More About Psychology than Physics

The Great Global Warming Debate seems (on the surface, at least) to be a question of science where opinions should count for nothing and verifiable hypotheses for everything. In general the prevailing theory explains the world until a better one comes along to displace it. If you try to disprove the laws of thermodynamics - go on, give it a go! - you'll make history if you succeed. You'll be revered.

Science is subject to something called "Popperian falsifiability", after the great science philosopher Karl Popper. Popper argued that a theory can be considered scientific only if subject to falsifiability. That is, if false it can be refuted by observation or experiment. In contrast, political ideas can be as wacky as yer like: even the most discredited ideas manage some sort of following. And as for religious 'truths'... (ah, you can complete the sentence for me).

The new religion of global warmism is immune to falsifiability. To every refutation there is an equal and opposite riposte. It is unfalsifiable. If the Britain disappears under a ten mile sheet of ice the Warmistas can sneer, "Huh! It would've been twenty miles thick but for greenhouse gases." I have on several occasions volunteered my acceptance criteria: I will accept Global Warming if (you guessed it) the..... globe warms. Specifically, if the annual mean temperature anomaly of the GISS data series exceeds 1.0C in three of the years in the current decade I'll surrender. When I challenge Warmists to state their falsifiability criteria the reply is along the lines of, "Ahhhh, no, you can't get us on THAT one! No sir! If the inevitable warming is delayed by a few years it'll be along at some later time." Substitute for the word warming for The Second Coming or The Galactic Spacefleet and the warped self-sustaining logic is just as evident.

Since time immemorial Man has had a deep-seated need to fear an apocalypse. Our ancestors feared great floods and barbarians at the gates. They feared flying saucers and commie domino effects. They feared anarchists poisoning the reservoirs and divine termination of this wicked world. Video flagare; audio clamare. Global Warming is merely the latest millennial fear; a neoapocalyptic Armageddon myth.

Is it a giant hoax; a worldwide conspiracy? I think not. I think that the maniacs peddling this scare story sincerely believe thier own nonsense. They're genuinely deluded. Listen to the coach of the Hockey Team, Michael Mann:

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/michael_mann_unprecedented_attacks_on_climate_research/

That's what science* is up against.

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*'Science' does not include the bankrupt numerological discipline of Climatography which has been stripped of its 'ology'. They barely deserve an 'ography'.