As discussed here, the climate models that predicted a rapidly warming earth continue to be way way off.
The measured results and the projected results are way off.
I’ve received a lot of grief over the years from friends, family and colleagues because I’m a global warming “skeptic” (particularly about AGW).
Now mind you, I drive an electric car powered by a solar array and live in a house heated and cooled through Geothermal and had a gold rating from the NAHB. I personally fall into the “the less impact I can have on the environment, the better” line. But there’s a big difference between what I voluntarily do and what the government tries to coerce me and other people to do and when it comes to AGW, I don’t think the evidence is compelling enough to justify a world wide economic depression.
6 years ago, I wrote an article called “What happens if the Earth starts cooling?” which speculated on what would environmentalists say if their predictions turned out to be wrong. 6 years later, the measured temperatures for 2012 are less than those of 2006 which in turn were less than 2005 which where less than 2003 which were less than 1998. I’m not arguing a trend down but now that global temperatures have gotten highly politicized, the measured temperatures are now much more scrutinized than they used to be (which is why I take the precision of temperatures in say 1950 with a grain of salt).
What should be reasonably irrefutable at this stage is that the climate models are wrong. By a lot. According to the models, the mean atmospheric temperatures should be well over almost 0.50 degrees higher than they were in 2000. Instead, it’s within the margin of error of being the same.
None of this should mean that we shouldn’t try to reduce our impact on the environment. But hopefully people will start to decouple their political beliefs from their scientific beliefs. Skepticism isn’t a bad thing.
I’d like to think I’m doing my part but I did this voluntarily.