Here we go again. You may have noticed recently the spasmodic shrieks of climate change “happening faster than predicted!” — despite the fact that the only thing happening faster than predicted has been CO2 emissions . . . not concentrations, not warming (since it’s cooling), none of the parade of horribles — all of which shows how, to the alarmists, CO2 emissions equate with catastrophic climate change, whatever is really going on in the climate notwithstanding. Science!
You may also have noticed how those shrieks are a tad inconsistent with the spate of papers claiming to explain away why the warming hasn’t come. Mmm. Ah. Yes. Well. Just need more grant money.
Next Sunday will be no different, when an embargo expires on a paper claiming to have found the latest, bestest reason to explain why the warming — that’s happening much faster than predicted! — hasn’t actually been happening.
These particular authors — I have to be careful with this embargo thing — found lead in one-third of ice-forming particles formed back in the day before lead was phased out of fuels; they believe that lead formed half of all such particles, suggesting to them that lead triggers ice formation under natural conditions.
It could indicate all of that. Or not. I remember lessons from this debate along the lines of correlation not equaling causation — we’d all like to avoid the embarrassing problem encountered by Al Gore and later Laurie David claiming that CO2 caused warming, something which the literature doesn’t support (as the U.K. High Court solemnly pronounced), and which the IPCC hasn’t quite been able to establish — no matter what Hollywood says. So it is also possible that, say, lead likes ice . . . or at least ends up there sometimes . . . or even that leaded gas leads to global cooling. It could suggest any number of things.
Anyway, just something to remember when you hear these claims that they’ve alternately explained why the warming hasn’t quite happened as predicted, while also continually hyperventilating that it’s happening faster than expected.