Settled science: ‘The Cause’ has seven excuses for ‘The Pause’

Climate witchcraft (© Flickr)

Paraphrasing Andrew S Tanenbaum, the nice thing about warmist excuses is that you have so many to choose from.

The science is so settled that ‘the Cause’ has at least seven different explanations for ‘the Pause’. And of course, they all studiously avoid the obvious answer: that the climate’s actual sensitivity to increasing CO2 is less than the warmists want it to be.

So here we present the Seven Excuses of the Cause:

Excuse 1 – Low Solar Activity

We all know, from the IPCC down, that high solar activity had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with late 20th century warming. How ridiculous to suggest such a thing! But oddly, low solar activity can be invoked as a reason for a sudden stop in that warming. Go figure.

Excuse 2 – Ocean heat

Ah yes, the old ‘dog ate my warming’ excuse. The oceans have mysteriously sucked all the heat out of the atmosphere and have hidden it deep down, conveniently where nobody can measure it. This makes perfect sense, as everybody knows that in order to heat up a cold bath, all we need to do is turn the fan heater on in the bathroom, right?

Excuse 3 – Coal burning in China

Burning coal has added more particulates to the atmosphere, which has reduced insolation and therefore reduced warming. So burning coal good because it stops global warming, but er, burning coal bad because it causes global warming… ouch, my head hurts.

Excuse 4 – Montreal Protocol

The ‘success’ of the Montreal Protocol in reducing CFCs in the atmosphere, themselves greenhouse gases, is the reason why the planet is not warming as fast. At least it achieved something, then, because the Ozone Hole is still there. But David Karoly says CFCs are a far smaller component of warming than CO2… oh dear, another quandary.

Excuse 5 – Pause? What pause?

The Wilful Blindness excuse. Rather than actually work out why the pause has occurred, it’s much easier just to disappear it (a la Medieval Warm Period) by miraculously cooling the past and pretending that warming is continuing exactly the same, or even better, accelerating. I mean, GISS do it all the time, so who will notice?

Excuse 6 – Volcanoes, not pollution

Please forget you just read Excuse 3 above. It’s the volcanoes what done it.

Excuse 7 – Stratospheric water vapour

Please forget you just read all of the above excuses. It’s this one. No, really. Or all of them. Whatever. Just give us more money.

Thanks to Marc Morano, who has all the links over at the ‘Depot.