Last night I watched a my favorite Twilight Zone episode titled "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up." Transport yourself back to 1961, and watch the whole thing on Youtube: Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3. Hint: skip to Part 3. You can figure out what led up to that point, and it's only about five minutes, including the credits.
Fifty years ago it must have seemed conceivable that humanoids from Mars and Venus could cleverly conceal their third arm or eyeball, blend with Earthlings, and plan their invasions.
These days the invasion is in the form of global warming -- scientifically proven, according to Al Gore. Problem is, the warmists got the jump on skeptics and deemed it verified before all the facts could be analyzed by scientists not already on board with the theory. Skeptics were blackballed and called "Deniers."
But it's looking more and more like the skeptics are right. Warmists are backtracking, or more to the point, Global Warming Apocalypse Canceled as Patrick J. Michaels notes with a list of scientists who have downsized their predictions about future hotness.
And right on cue here comes The Research Council of Norway with Global warming less extreme than feared?. Excerpt:
After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise. ...
Professor Berntsen explains the changed predictions:
“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.
“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now.”
But there's a caveat:
However, the Council releases this news with the caveat that the findings outlined in this news brief have yet to be verified and that the results will only become significant once they are confirmed by other studies.
But this seems certain: Not all the factors that affect the climate are human. And you read it here first: Martians don't look like humans with three arms.
For a more thorough analysis of the Norway study, see Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity.
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