The Oz editorial - still wing-nut central. Part III

And now folks, a short break from pointing out Ray Evans’ silliness to point out yet more equal silliness in the form of the latest editorial from the Australian.

Surprise, surprise; there is mention of some sort of debate, and a recent obscure program on British TV.

While Australian commercial television networks are jumping on the climate change bandwagon with sophisticated graphics showing tornadoes ripping through Sydney Harbour Bridge, debate is increasing about the quality of the science underpinning global warming hysteria. A recent Channel Four documentary in Britain, The Great Climate Change Swindle, presents a coherent argument for why governments must hasten slowly in responding. The British documentary highlights the anomaly that temperatures are rising faster at the earth's surface than in the upper atmosphere, directly contradicting the greenhouse hypothesis. It also highlights the fact that ice core data relied on by global warming alarmists actually shows world temperature increases occurred hundreds of years before corresponding rises in the level of atmospheric C02, again contradicting greenhouse theory. The program puts forward evidence to show the world's climate is controlled by clouds, which are controlled by cosmic rays, which are in turn controlled by the sun.

Increasing debate? Wing-nuts sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling: “La, la, la, cosmic rays, la, la, green religion, la, la, la, Left-wing conspiracy, la, la…..” doesn’t sound like it to me, but I wasn’t in the debating team at school, so what would I know?

And this recent C4 fictional piece; something to do with swindling the gullible, I believe?

A complete demolition of all the program’s many-times-in-the-past debunked points is up at RealClimate.

As is usual, the Oz can’t even get the denialist point of view right. The troposphere isn’t the upper atmosphere; it’s the ‘lower’ atmosphere. (The punters aren’t important enough to be actually accurate with words, I guess).

Apart from that, what does IPCC AR4 have to say about the discrepancy that was noted in TAR (So much for swindling, hey? The greenleftislamofascists wanted to hide the anomaly so bad, they discussed in both of the two most recent IPCC reports. How tricky is that?).

First, TAR (2001):

After the shift in the late 1970s, the overall tropospheric temperature trend is near zero but the surface has warmed.

Then AR4 (2007):

New analyses of balloon-borne and satellite measurements of lower- and mid-tropospheric temperature show warming rates that are similar to those of the surface temperature record and are consistent within their respective uncertainties, largely reconciling a discrepancy noted in the TAR.

Next, we have CO2 levels rising slightly after temperature had began climb in the past. Proves some bloke called Al Gore is a fraud, I believe.

Well, not quite.

It just so happens that the lag fits in exactly with current theory. CO2 in past major warming events was a feedback agent rather than a forcing agent. The initial warming was most likely caused by orbital variations. Currently CO2 is a forcing agent (as we are releasing it by burning fossil fuels etc.). The possibility exists for it to become yet again a feedback agent due to current warming (i.e. warmer oceans holding less dissolved CO2, another point misrepresented by the program). That would be a bad thing.

A then it’s the flavour of the month – cosmic rays.

Yes, well, let me see.

The Australian editorial writers definitely hate science and, perversely, they seem to like being swindled.

Strange.