Another year, another hottest year on record, another round of denial
8:47 am January 14, 2011, by Jay
Global warming deniers have established three basic defensive positions.
1.) Global warming isn’t happening.
2.) Global warming is happening, but mankind is not to blame.
3.) Global warming is happening, mankind is to blame, but there’s nothing much that we can or should do about it except adapt.
For a long time, Position One — the planet isn’t warming — was the preferred position, but as the years roll by and the data roll in, it has become increasingly awkward to try to defend that claim.
For example, despite all the attempts to claim a cooling trend underway, etc., there is this:
New government figures for the global climate show that 2010 was the wettest year in the historical record, and it tied 2005 as the hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880.
The new figures confirm that 2010 will go down as one of the more remarkable years in the annals of climatology. It featured prodigious snowstorms that broke seasonal records in the United States and Europe; a record-shattering summer heat wave that scorched Russia; strong floods that drove people from their homes in places like Pakistan, Australia, California and Tennessee; a severe die-off of coral reefs; and a continuation in the global trend of a warming climate.
Two agencies, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported Wednesday that the global average surface temperature for 2010 had tied the record set in 2005. The analyses differ slightly; in the NOAA version, the 2010 temperature was 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit above the average for the 20th century, which is 57 degrees.
It was the 34th year running that global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average; the last below-average year was 1976. The new figures show that 9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since the beginning of 2001.
Those who have retreated to Position Two — the planet is warming, but we didn’t do it — continue to base their claim on the argument that computerized climate models aren’t accurate enough to tell us what’s happening. The fact that those models have been predicting greenhouse-driven warming for 30 years now — and that the climate has responded over those 30 years pretty much as the models warned — doesn’t penetrate the denial for most.
However, even Bjorn Lomborg, the Swedish writer once the darling of the deniers, has abandoned Position Two and now seeks shelter in Position Three. “Global warming is real – it is man-made and it is an important problem,” he told the press last year. “But it is not the end of the world.”
Running through all three positions is a common theme voiced in comments every time I raise the issue, a theme that attempts to explain why the overwhelming majority of scientists insist that global warming is real and that we’re to blame. Stripped to its essence, the theory dismisses global warming science as a conspiracy organized by a secret, global cabal of Ph.Ds who are lying and distorting the science in an effort to keep grant money flowing into their bank accounts and bring down Western capitalism in the process.
What’s interesting is that for the most part, that theory has gotten traction only among American conservatives. Conservatives in other industrialized, science-oriented countries recognize its absurdity and accept the reality of manmade climate change. They may debate the best approach to combat it, but as a rule they do not attempt to deny its basic existence.
I’m not sure how to account for that difference.
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