A lifetime's worth of climate alarmism in a nutshell

 I think this comment by David M Hoffer (posted on WUWT) provides a witty but true summary of the alarmist positions and debating styles since 1971, with a 'projection' for the year 2031 ( I have added the boldening and italics):

Natural variation and climate cycles explained:

1971
Alarmists: There’s an ice age coming!
Skeptic: Looks like natural variation, not a long term trend….
Alarmists: Blasphemer! Ice Age! We’re all going to die!

1991
Alarmists: The world is heating up at an unprecedented rate!
Skeptic: But you just said….
Alarmists: CO2! CO2 is causing unprecedented warming!
Skeptic: OK, forget the ice age then, it STILL looks like natural variation, not a long term trend…
Alarmists: Blasphemer! Tipping point! We’re all going to die!

2011
Skeptic: You know, looking at the last 10 to 15 years, it doesn’t seem like there’s been any more warming….
Alarmists: Natural variation! It's hiding the warming!
Skeptic: Hiding the warming? Where?
Alarmists: Blasphemer! The warming is hiding in the bottom of the ocean where we can’t measure it, and/or being masked by aerosols, and/or being hidden by natural variation! We’re all going to die!

2031
Alarmist: There’s an ice age coming!
Skeptic: Looks like…never mind, I know where this is going. We’re all going to die. I for one, because a) I'm old and b) I’m sick to death of listening to alarmism.

Climate Classroom: questions to stick on the wall

'The climate-change con artists' 
is the title of a post by Leighton Steward in which he recalls Travesty Trenberth's Lament 'we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment', and goes on to pose eight questions which he would like to see addressed by climate alarmists, or 'climate-change con artists' as he also more colourfully describes them.  I think these questions would make a fine poster for the wall of any classroom in which climate change is raised:

1. Why can't warming alarmists produce a single legitimate example of empirical evidence to support the manmade global-warming hypothesis?
   
2. Why has Earth been warming for 300 years when man has only emitted measurable amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere for the last 150 years?
   
3. Why did Earth cool for 500 years before the recent 300 year warming and warm for several hundred years before that when even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says CO2 levels did not change?
   
4. Why was the Medieval Warm Period, a thousand years ago, warmer than today even though the CO2 level was 38 percent lower than today?
   
5. Why did many of Earth's major glaciers in the Alps. Asia, New Zealand and Patagonia begin to retreat nearly half a century before the Industrial Revolution and man's CO2 emissions?
   
6. Of the last five interglacials, going back 400,000 years, why is our current interglacial the coolest of the five even though Earth's CO2 level is about 35 percent higher?
   
7. Why has our current 10,000-year-long Holocene epoch been warmer than today for 50 percent of the time when CO2 levels were about 35 percent lower than today?
   
8. Why are correlations of Earth's temperature with natural factors such as sunspot numbers, solar cycle lengths, solar magnetic variations and changes in major ocean currents all better than the correlation of Earth's temperature with CO2 levels?

I am waiting for my copy of Plimer's new book  - it will shortly be in carry-on luggage and flying through the air to me from Australia.  I'll review it here later this month, and I anticipate a bumper crop of further questions that the conscientious teacher will not find any answer for in any climate-alarm-fouled syllabus. They would however be of value as conversation-pieces, or discussion-starters for any suitably qualified class with a suitably courageous teacher willing to raise questions about the relative importance of CO2 as an influence on climate..


According to the source:
Leighton Steward is a geologist, environmentalist, author and retired energy industry executive. He currently heads up the organization Plants Need CO2 and is a veteran of television and talk radio where he helps educate the public and politicians about the benefits of CO2 as it relates to the plant and animal ecosystems.