I really hope that Chris and the rest of the Intersection bloggers take time to realize that the deniers have always been right, and the alarmists have always been wrong.

Deniers have been saying for years that a dampening mechanism will blunt the supposed C02 forcing. Now we find that we were exactly right, that the same mechanism that produced the warming, is now producing cooling.

How long will the cooling last before the Warmists give up and admit their ignorance?

Notice anything missing here? Another option is “Do they have a point?” If you are not willing to listen, you can never persuade. For instance, like Naomi Oreskes, I hold that models can never “prove” anything.

http://www.likbez.com/AV/CS/Pre01-oreskes.pdf

This kerfuffle about the SO2 and the past decade is entirely based on climate models. Models which are unproven, and which, as Oreskes states, cannot prove themselves.

I know that later on, she seems to have adopted a position that a popular vote can over-ride reason, but has her earlier paper been shown to be incorrect through use of logic?

It’s figure 2 from the SI.

The figure description is:
“Figure S-2 Observed global surface temperature degrees Celsius (black line). Out-of-sample
forecast with no additional temperature data after 1870 (orange line), and 1999
(purple line).”

The reference for the data appears to be:
Jones P-D, Osborn T-J, Briffa K-R (2009) Global monthly and annual temperature
anomalies (degrees C), 1850–2008 (Relative to the 1961–1990 mean) (Hadley Center
for Climate Prediction and Research-University of East Anglia, Norwich, United
Kingdom).

although it’s hard to be sure – since Mann was involved, it could be the rainfall figures for Paris for all we know.

The differences are most likely due to the smoothing used – end-point smoothing conventions can have some odd effects.

http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

And

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/

Climate science is one of the few professions where there is no consequence for being wrong. If you are a medical doctor how long do you think you would last if your diagnoses were less then 50% accurate. Or an engineer , gee I’m sorry the plain crashed I’ll do better on that wing design next time.

When climate science can accurately predict the future instead of just the past it will be time to listen to what they have to say. But until then it is unwise and potentially damaging to put any policies in place based on their predictions.

On consequences, I’m a little more forgiving; I don’t believe that the consequences for a lot of actions can be foreseen. What it comes down to is that everything is part of a series of systems. When you change one object, other linked elements are impacted. It is impossible for enough data to be gathered to completely account for each possible consequence of a series of actions. Global warming is a consequence of the progress of human society. Improved living conditions and the reduction of real levels of poverty (as in, in America our poor have an obesity problem too) are the things that have caused global warming.

This is not an attempt to create a false dichotomy of choosing between poverty reduction or prevention of global warming (although to really reverse trends of global warming might bankrupt the wealthy nations). This is an observation that there are consequences to the consequence mitigation strategies which I find objectionable because they hurt the way humans are living. What I haven’t heard yet is a way to improve our lives while simultaneously preventing global warming. It’s been an either/or choice for quite a while as the narrative of alarmists creates the false dichotomy. Find a third way that doesn’t hurt the environment while still allowing for real human growth, not restraint, and I’ll get on board.