Not a great week for the global warming alarmists

Ok, so on the heels of Nature publishing a "Time to ditch Kyoto" piece, another report has appeared online, severely questioning the climate models that form the very basis of the alarmist case. The title of this report is "Why Is Climate Sensitivity So Unpredictable?".

Given that we're constantly told that "the science is settled" and "the debate is over", you might reasonably expect this report to appear only on some evil denier website, maybe exxon.com, am I right?

Actually, no. The report appears in Science.

An excerpt from this report:

The envelope of uncertainty in climate projections has not narrowed appreciably over the past 30 years, despite tremendous increases in computing power, in observations, and in the number of scientists studying the problem (1). This suggests that efforts to reduce uncertainty in climate projections have been impeded either by fundamental gaps in our understanding of the climate system or by some feature (which itself might be well understood) of the system's underlying nature.

Just for review, what were scientists predicting about three decades ago, when their ability to predict future climate was not "appreciably" worse than it is now?

1. In a Washington Post article in 1971, amid a short-term period of global cooling, we were told that dust from burning fossil fuel could trigger a new ice age, with the Earth's temperature falling by six degrees. Another classic quote from the article:

They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere.

2. In 1975, after some more short-term global cooling, that infamous Newsweek "Cooling World" article appeared.

Another excerpt:

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars’ worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.

The timing of this 1975 cooling panic is particularly humorous, since it occurred immediately before a sudden, dramatic warming that occurred in a one-year period around 1976:

...Brian Hartman and Gerd Wendler of the Alaska-taxpayer-funded Alaska Climate Research Center have written extensively on this subject. They are particularly interested in something called “The Great Pacific Climate Shift,” a sudden and dramatic warming that occurred in a one-year period around 1976.

Here’s what they have written:

When analyzing the total time period from 1951-2001, warming is observed, however the 25-year trend analyses before 1976 (1951-1975) and thereafter (1977-2001) both display cooling.

That’s right. The mean Alaskan temperature has been declining for the last quarter-century. All of the warming is determined by a mysterious, single-year “burp” in Pacific Ocean temperature.

Is that due to human activity? Search the scientific literature for a computer model of human influence on climate that says all our impact occurred at once, in a single year. You won’t find one reference.