Haunting the Library
Just another example of how you can make any ridiculous prediction of doom, providing it’s far enough in the future that everyone will have forgotten about it amidst the kerfuffle of the latest, updated predictions. Here’s a 1988 news report on the findings of the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, the forerunner to the IPCC:
WASHINGTON - A group of scientists is offering a sober weather forecast for the year 2020: the planet’s average temperature hitting a 10,000 year high, and the world’s oceans surging an average of 83 feet inland.
The Hour, June 13th 1988.
Global temperature anomalies then were the same as they are now (=+0.14C last month, +0.12 in July 1988).
Actually, the prediction that the sea would soon be swallowing up a massive 83 feet of shoreline around the world came not from the WMO, but was an extrapolation of its findings by that sober and well-respected scientist and environmental campaigner, Michael Oppenheimer. “Things are going to change too fast” Oppenheimer is reported to have said, in a comment typical of the cautious, non-hysterical manner he is widely famed for.
Sea levels since 1988 according to the rate established by Holgate (2007) have risen about 1.6 inches globally. At this rate it would be 2.2 inches higher in 2020 than 1988. Right now had Oppenheimer been right, sea levels would be 59.6 feet higher than 1988. Here was Holgate’s, decadal change analysis - no acceleration but decadal variability.
Here is the recent sea level change (enlarged - source).
Steve Goddard notes Hansen is dead certain multi-meter sea level rises are due this century. How is he doing?
Michael Oppenheimer is currently a lead author with the IPCC. It is not known whether he still expects the world to lose 83 feet of coast within the next nine years or not. Seems like ‘scientists’ like Erlich, Holdren, Oppenheimer, Hansen get free pass on totally failed projections. Indeed they get awards and acclaims.
By James Taylor, Heartland Institute
I just finished listening in on the Center for American Progress press call titled, “Climate Deniers Congregate in the Nation’s Capital.” The press call’s explicit purpose was to criticize the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, taking place tomorrow and Friday in Washington, DC. The presenters were Center for American Progress senior fellow Joe Romm, former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, and scientist/global warming activist Peter Gleick.
The press call was surreal, for many reasons. Here are a few quick highlights (or, more accurately, lowlights):
+ Last week I had received an email from the Center for American Progress announcing the press call and inviting me to participate. Yet when I called in and pleasantly identified myself to the moderator, the moderator acted surprised and flustered when I identified my affiliation with the Heartland Institute. As soon as the session reached the Question and Answer period, I hit the “* 1” buttons on my phone to indicate I wished to ask a question. After taking several questions from other participants, the moderator announced she would then be taking “the final question.” Although I had indicated at the very beginning of Q&A that I wished to ask a question, she refused to allow me to do so. Did they invite me by mistake, or did they think I would simply sit silently while they misrepresented facts and attacked the Heartland Institute? Either way, they sure didn’t allow me to ask a question, like they allowed everybody else to do.
+ Joe Romm began the call by extensively bemoaning those “who attack and harass climate scientists.” Later, he criticized those who would “kill the messenger” rather than discuss the scientific facts. Yet before the call was over, Romm repeatedly and personally attacked the scientists speaking at the Heartland Institute conference, including calling them purveyors of “astrology” and “flat earth conspiracy stuff.”
+ Global warming activist Peter Gleick showed just how closed minded he and so many alarmists are. When a reporter asked if the Center for American Progress was going to accept the Heartland Institute’s invitation for the Center to attend the Heartland Institute conference, Gleick said, “There is no science that will be discussed that is new or interesting.” No wonder the alarmists just don’t get it. When you refuse to listen with an open mind to scientists who have differing points of view, of course you will continue to be wrong on the science and of course the American people will listen to you less and less. As opposed to Gleick, I am always happy, and indeed eager, to listen to and consider all sides of the climate change issue.
+ Joe Romm responded to the same question about the Heartland Institute invitation by saying, “There is nothing to be gained by asking questions of people whose minds are closed.” Surreal. In other words, ‘I will choose to be closed-minded and not listen to scientists who disagree with me because I believe they are closed-minded.’ Romm also claimed the scientists speaking at the Heartland Institute climate conferences, which have included scientists at MIT, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, NASA, NOAA, etc., are “not credible sources.” Yes, he seriously said that.
+ Boehlert repeatedly asserted that 97 percent of scientists say climate change is causing negative consequences and that people can’t keep putting off dealing with it. Perhaps the moderator wouldn’t let me ask a question because she knew Boehlert provided no credible source (and could not provide a credible source) for this assertion.
+ Boehlert also asserted that Sen. James Inhofe, a keynote speaker at the Heartland Institute conference, said “climate science is a big hoax.” Again, perhaps the moderator wouldn’t let me ask a question because she knew Boehlert provided no credible source (and could not provide a credible source) for this assertion.
+ In the course of asking Romm a question, a reporter from Bloomberg referred to the Heartland Conference as a “denial fest.” And the media wonder why polls show the American people no longer trust the media to be objective or accurate.
(Note: All quotes and summaries of comments are taken from my personal notes of the conference call.)
IPCC, AAAS, Climate Progress Complaint departments
Romm, Gleick and Boehlert all proved again they were “not smarter than a fifth grader”. What a waste of time and of George Soros’s money.
By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM, WeatherBell
Last summer I gave a talk to 300 farmers in Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil on the July 4th US holiday at the invitation of my South American meteorological friends, Alexandre and Eugenio at the METSUL.
Now as June draws to an end, the southern parts of Brazil, a tropical country, has been stricken by the coldest weather in a decade, driving down temperatures to record-low levels and bringing snow in some areas.
In Santa Catarina, the temperature fell to 8.8 Celsius degrees below zero in the small town of Urupema on Tuesday, while in Cambara do Sul, in Rio Grande do Sul state, along the southern border, the temperature dropped to minus 6.2 degrees.
The three cities of the southern region on Tuesday also recorded record-low temperatures for the year, and the lowest temperature was monitored in Curitiba, capital of Parana state, where the temperature hovered around one degree above zero.
In Sao Paulo state, in the southeastern region, temperatures also fell to record-low levels: in Sao Paulo, the state capital, the mercury fell to 2.3 degrees, the lowest since 2003, and in Campos do Jordao, a mountainous town, the temperature dropped to 3.8 degrees below zero, the lowest since 1998.
Several towns of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina even had snow on Monday with more possible.
The Metsul map of Parana above shows the cold. Some of their posted images are below. Their blog is excellent and always filled with images but the text descriptions are in Portuguese. Tools exist on the web to translate blocks of text.
The second day of frost cause problems for grain crops in western Paraná. Both corn and wheat likely were nipped from the cold during the early hours on Tuesday.
According to local reports wheat saw more serious damage than corn. “Local agronomists estimated out 40% of corn planted in the western of the state runs the risk of losses. In volume, it is somewhere around 1 million tons. They make clear, however, that the actual size of the damage should only be known in a week.
Tuesday marked the largest cold frost of the last five years in the region of Terra Roxa. In Sao Pedro do Iguaçu, where the minimum was -2 C, frost was stronger than yesterday. As there was no wind, the freezing was faster and, therefore, about 25% of wheat, which was in the silking stage, was affected.
In Cascavel, the frost was also stronger the second night. But at first glance, the damage was not greater than those of yesterday. The biggest problem was the result of two consecutive days of intense cold, especially for late crops.
The relevance might be what happens in the United States where an early frost could nip the record late planted corn in parts of the north central and eastern Corn Belt. That is one of the ways a late planted crop has lower yields.
Meanwhile further east, South Africa is bracing for extreme cold. ALLAFRICA.COM reports:
“Zimbabweans should brace for a severe cold spell from today up to Monday next week, with overnight ground temperatures expected to drop to minus eight degrees Celsius in some places.
The Meteorological Services Department yesterday said the cold spell was a result of dry and cold continental winds sweeping across the region. The cold front would see temperatures plummeting and some areas recording severe ground frost in the morning.
“Members of the public, especially the vulnerable in such areas are urged to put on warm clothing or take necessary measures to make themselves comfortable.”
The department warned people against using braziers in their houses. The department urged people to open windows at night when using braziers and also to monitor them when there are children around.
It also urged farmers to be wary of damage to their crops, advising them to take appropriate measures. Some of the crops that are affected by cold weather are tomatoes, potatoes, wheat, flowers and vegetables.
Every year the country experience severe cold spells in winter as cold fronts move in from the south and temperatures can go as low as minus 10 degrees Celsius, the Met Department said.”
This year the cold in South America may be augmented by the Chilean volcanic aerosols which have made for some beautiful sunsets but has hampered air travel in South Amrica and as far away as Australia and New Zealand.
Statement from American Tradition Institute Environmental Law Center in Response to American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Misleading Accusations Against ATI Today
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Contacts:
Christopher Horner, director of litigation, chris.horner@atinstitute.org
Paul Chesser, executive director, paul.chesser@atinstitute.org
Today the board of directors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a statement and press release that denounced “personal attacks,” “harassment,” “death threats,” and “legal challenges” toward climate scientists. AAAS’s press release specifically cited actions taken by American Tradition Institute’s Environmental Law Center in its efforts to obtain records of Climategate scientist Dr. Michael Mann from the University of Virginia, and its efforts to obtain outside employment records of climate activist Dr. James Hansen from the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA). AAAS wrote, in part, “we are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions.”
Response to AAAS from ATI Environmental Law Center director of litigation Christopher Horner:
“I noticed no relation between our initiative and the AAAS Board’s rhetoric until they mentioned us somewhat incongruously.
“The notion that application of laws that expressly cover academics is an ‘attack’ on them is substantively identical to Hollywood apologists who call application of other laws to Roman Polanski an attack on Polanski. They lost the plot somewhere along the way.
“AAAS’s failure to mention the group that invented this series of requests, Greenpeace, informs our conclusion that this outrage is selective, and is therefore either feigned or hypocritical. Their problem is plainly with the laws, but it is a problem they have had over the decades: That transparency and ethics laws also apply to scientists who subsist on taxpayer revenue. This they also forgot to mention.
“Finally, the American Association of University Professors’ code of professional ethics indicates that efforts to manipulate the peer review process are impermissible. Given the overlap, and for other reasons, we assume AAAS agrees with these principles or at a minimum accepts them. But this, too, is insincere if such behavior is permitted or ignored where just cause indicates further inquiry is warranted, as long as the parties at issue are those whose views the AAAS or AAUP sympathize with. In Mann’s case, if our review of his documents which belong to the taxpayer also happen to exonerate him from the suspicions that have arisen, we will be the first to do so.”
For an interview with Christopher Horner, email chris.horner@atinstitute.org or paul.chesser@atinstitute.org or call (202)670-2680.
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Others were quick to echo ATI - Climate Change Skepticism Now Considered ‘Harassment’?
By Bob Carter, the Age
There is no need for a carbon tax because dangerous global warming is not occurring.
WELL, you have to admit that they’ve tried hard. Labor, that is. In April 2007 Kevin Rudd, prior to his election as prime minister, appointed distinguished social scientist Ross Garnaut to advise the party on global warming. A strange decision, that: ‘’Here’s a scientific problem so let’s appoint an economist to give us policy advice.’’
Roll forward 18 months to September 2008 and the publication of the first Garnaut report, in which we find much esoteric economic advice on how to deal with an assumed global warming problem for which no independent scientific evidence was provided. Instead, Garnaut relied then, and still relies now, upon the alarmist and politicised ‘’science’’ provided by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Unfortunately, the panel’s reputation as a source of credible, impartial science advice was badly damaged by the leaked ‘’Climate-gate’’ emails in November 2009, and has since continued to decline as evidence mounts for the controlling influence of environmental lobby groups on its activities.
Pass on again to February this year, past the final defeat of the emissions trading bill in the Senate in July 2009, the collapse of the Copenhagen climate talks in December 2009 and the rise of Julia Gillard to the prime ministership in June 2010. On February 10, Tim Flannery was appointed Climate Commissioner - presumably to provide a more friendly public face to the government’s anti-global warming campaign. Unfortunately, Flannery’s Gaia-esque style and his numerous failed climate prognostications undermine the credibility of the commission.
Illustration: John Spooner
Now, just last week, we discover that the new Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb, believes too that ‘’scientific consensus … provides the best guidance we have for decisions that are informed and rational’’, and that ‘’the science is in on climate change’’.
Wrong on both counts. Where a scientific issue is involved, the best way to approach the formulation of public policy is not to base it on a contrived consensus of self-interested parties, nor to ‘’ask the UN’’, but to pay attention to the facts and keep an open mind.
Since 2007, then, the government’s chosen climate communicators have failed to confront the real climate change issue (which is natural climate hazard). Second, and as opinion polls clearly show, they have failed to convince the public that a global warming crisis exists, or that a carbon dioxide tax will have any beneficial influence on future climate. Labor’s woe-is-me moment has clearly arrived.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet announced the government’s solution on June 16. It is to spend $12 million on ‘’informing’’ the electorate about the need for a carbon dioxide tax.
It is certainly true that voters need to understand better the most important facts relevant to allegedly dangerous, human-related global warming. So let us list the five most salient facts the minister might try to communicate in his advertisements.
Fact 1. A mild warming of about 0.5 degrees Celsius (well within previous natural temperature variations) occurred between 1979 and 1998, and has been followed by slight global cooling over the past 10 years. Ergo, dangerous global warming is not occurring.
Fact 2. Between 2001 and 2010 global average temperature decreased by 0.05 degrees, over the same time that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased by 5 per cent. Ergo, carbon dioxide emissions are not driving dangerous warming.
Fact 3. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial. In increasing quantity it causes mild though diminishing warming (useful at a time of a quiet sun and likely near-future planetary cooling) and acts as a valuable plant fertiliser. Extra carbon dioxide helps to shrink the Sahara Desert, green the planet and feed the world. Ergo, carbon dioxide is neither a pollutant nor dangerous, but an environmental benefit.
Fact 4. Closing down the whole Australian industrial economy might result in the prevention of about 0.02 degrees of warming. Reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 (the government’s target) will avert an even smaller warming of about 0.002 degrees. Ergo, cutting Australian emissions will make no measurable difference to global climate.
Fact 5. For an assumed tax rate of $25 a tonne of carbon dioxide, the costs passed down to an average family of four will exceed $2000 a year.
So the cost-benefit equation is this: ‘’Your family pays more than $2000 a year in extra tax in return for a possible cooling of the globe by two one-thousandths of a degree.’’ Remember, too, that Garnaut’s recommendation is that the tax rate should be increased at 4 per cent a year, which would result in a cost doubling in less than 20 years.
In the light of these facts, little wonder the government’s four horsemen of the climate apocalypse have been unable to convince the public of the desirability of carbon dioxide taxation. Labor has indeed tried hard and valiantly, but it is time to admit failure and to adopt an alternative policy.
Voters now recognise that in the absence of an international agreement no action that Australia takes can ‘’stop global warming’’. But natural climate hazard in Australia is so dangerous that nonetheless a need remains for a politically feasible, environmentally sensible and cost-effective climate policy. That policy should be to prepare for and adapt to all climatic hazards, as and when they occur and whatever their cause.
In the meantime, watch out for those ads that Minister Combet is going to run towards this end. After all, you’re paying for them.
Read more.
See also this post on a Lethal Blow for the Government Scheme.
By Ben Wolfgang, The Washington Times
House Republicans charged Wednesday that the Obama administration is aiming to establish a “propaganda office” for Democratic initiatives on global warming through a proposal to consolidate operations in a new “climate service” office within the Commerce Department
Tensions boiled over at a congressional hearing as officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defended the consolidation plan contained in President Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget and denied having any ulterior motive.
NOAA hopes to move more than 50 percent of its resources into the new climate service department, which it says will serve as the central clearinghouse for farmers, local governments, the military and academics seeking information on climate trends.
But a number of GOP lawmakers, who have staunchly opposed the administration’s climate and energy policies in the past, challenged NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco at a hearing of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.
“[The climate service office] sounds a lot like a propaganda office to me. This seems to be an unneeded distraction that has nothing to do with science,” said Rep. Paul C. Broun, Georgia Republican. “This just seems like a politically motivated advocacy office that this administration is trying to stand up.”
Read more.
By Steve McIntyre, Climate Audit
Update: See Russell Cook’s story “There is a Cancer Growing on the IPCC and Al Gore” on The American Thinker buildingf on McIntyre’s findings.
Close to 80 percent of the world’s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies a new report shows. In accompanying interviews, IPCC officials said that the obstacles were not scientific or technological, but merely a matter of political will.
Little of the increase was due to ‘traditional’ renewables (hydro and ‘traditional’ biomass, mostly dung), but to solar, wind and non-traditional biomass. I, for one, was keenly interested in how IPCC got to its potential 80%. Unfortunately, in keeping with execrable IPCC practices, the supporting documents for the Renewables Study were not made available at the time of the original announcement. (Only the Summary for Policy-makers was made available at the time.) This showed one worrying aspect of the announcement. The report was based on 164 ‘scenarios’ and the ‘up to 80%” scenario in the lead sentence of their press release was not representative of their scenarios, but the absolute top end. This sort of press release is not permitted in mining promotions and it remains a mystery to me why it is tolerated in academic press releases or press releases by international institutions.
The underlying report was scheduled for release on June 14 and was released today on schedule. Naturally, I was interested in the provenance of the 80% scenario and in determining precisely what due diligence had been carried out by IPCC to determine the realism of this scenario prior to endorsing it in their press release. I hoped against hope that it would be something more than an IPCC cover version of a Greenpeace study but was disappointed.
The scenarios are in chapter 10 of the Report. authors of the chapter are as follows (mainly German):
CLAs -Manfred Fischedick (Germany) and Roberto Schaeffer (Brazil). Lead Authors: Akintayo Adedoyin (Botswana), Makoto Akai (Japan), Thomas Bruckner (Germany), Leon Clarke (USA), Volker Krey (Austria/Germany), Ilkka Savolainen (Finland), Sven Teske (Germany), Diana Ürge‐Vorsatz (Hungary), Raymond Wright (Jamaica).
The 164 scenarios are referenced to a just-published and paywalled article by two of the Lead Authors (Krey and Clarke, 2011, Climate Policy). Update – Since this article has been relied upon in an IPCC report, it is liberated here.
Chapter 10 isolated four scenarios for more detailed reporting, one of which can be identified with the scenario featured in the IPCC press release. The identification is on the basis of Table 10.3 which shows 77% renewables in 2050 for the ER-2010 scenatio attributed to Teske et al., 2010. (Teske being another Chapter 10 Lead Author. This scenario is described as follows:
Low demand (e.g., due to a significant increase in energy efficiency) is combined with high RE deployment, no employment of CCS and a global nuclear phase-out by 2045 in the third mitigation scenario, Advanced Energy [R]evolution 2010 (Teske et al., 2010) (henceforth ER-2010).
Teske et al 2010 - online here - is cited as follows: Teske, S., T[homas] Pregger, S[onja] Simon, T[obias] Naegler, W[ina] Graus, and C[hristine] Lins (2010). Energy [R]evolution 2010—a sustainable world energy outlook. Energy Efficiency, doi:10.1007/s12053-010-9098-y.
However, googling the title led me first to a different article with the almost the same title ‘energy [ r]evolution:A SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL ENERGY OUTLOOK’ online here. This version is a joint publication of Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council, self-described as the ‘umbrella organisation of the European renewable energy industry’. the title page shows:
project manager & lead author - Sven Teske EREC Oliver Schäfer, Arthouros Zervos, Greenpeace International - Sven Teske, Jan Béranek, Stephanie Tunmore research & co-authors DLR, Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, Department of Systems Analysis and Technology Assessment, Stuttgart, Germany: Dr. Wolfram Krewitt, Dr. Sonja Simon, Dr. Thomas Pregger. DLR, Institute of Vehicle Concepts, Stuttgart, Germany: Dr. Stephan Schmid
Ecofys BV, Utrecht, The Netherlands: Wina Graus, Eliane Blomen.
The preface to the Greenpeace report is by one R.K. Pachauri, who stated:
This edition of Energy [R]evolution Scenarios provides a detailed analysis of the energy efficiency potential and choices in the transport sector. The material presented in this publication provides a useful basis for considering specific policies and developments that would be of value not only to the world but for different countries as they attempt to meet the global challenge confronting them. The work carried out in the following pages is comprehensive and rigorous, and even those who may not agree with the analysis presented would, perhaps, benefit from a deep study of the underlying assumptions that are linked with specific energy scenarios for the future.
Dr. R. K. Pachauri
DIRECTOR-GENERAL, THE ENERGY AND RESOURCES INSTITUTE (TERI) AND CHAIRMAN, INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE (IPCC)
Returning now to the original lead to the IPCC Press Release on renewables:
Close to 80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies a new report shows.
The basis for this claim is a Greenpeace scenario. The Lead Author of the IPCC assessment of the Greenpeace scenario was the same Greenpeace employee who had prepared the Greenpeace scenarios, the introduction to which was written by IPCC chair Pachauri.
The public and policy-makers are starving for independent and authoritative analysis of precisely how much weight can be placed on renewables in the energy future. It expects more from IPCC WG3 than a karaoke version of Greenpeace scenario.
It is totally unacceptable that IPCC should have had a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author of the critical Chapter 10, that the Greenpeace employee, as an IPCC Lead Author, should (like Michael Mann and Keith Briffa in comparable situations) have been responsible for assessing his own work and that, with such inadequate and non-independent ‘due diligence’, IPCC should have featured the Greenpeace scenario in its press release on renewables.
Everyone in IPCC WG3 should be terminated and, if the institution is to continue, it should be re-structured from scratch.
By Scottish Sceptic
For years we were told: “nothing other than manmade warming can explain the late 20th century rise in temperature”. To which the sensible sceptic asked: “what about natural variation”. To which the alarmist replied: “there is no such thing” or if they were more informed “the hockey stick proves that natural variation is too small and could not affect global temperature”.
Now of course it hasn’t warmed for over a decade and there’s only so long that you can hide such an obvious fact before even the most gullible start asking: why? So how do they explain this?
If natural variation is so small that it cannot have been responsible for the 20th century, then it is too small to have stopped the “warming”. If natural variation is big enough to cause sufficient cooling to cancel out the warming, then it is clearly big enough (when working in the opposite way i.e. to warm) to explain all the apparent warming in the 20th century.
The reason we got this doomsday cult, is because they managed to argue from a small and scientific warming of around 1C due to CO2 doubling up to as much as 6C due to what I can only say are entirely mythical “feedback effects”. Feedback effects, with no scientific proof, but which “conveniently” multiply the real science by whatever number they needed to “prove” that all the (apparent) 20th century warming was due to CO2. They did this by saying: “it has to be CO2 that caused the 2oth century warming because nothing else can explain the change, therefore the relationship between CO2 and temperature is whatever number we need to make the increase in CO2 cause the (apparent) increase in global temperature.”
It’s not science, but it certainly fooled a lot of people into believing it was “science”. They managed to justify this nonsense scaling up of the known effects to suit their political agenda with what I call the Sherlock Holmes defence: “when you have eliminated all possible causes, what remains, however illogical, must be the cause”.
That is why the debate was so heated: they needed to “prove” that nothing else could explain the 20th century upswing. That is why they ruthlessly attacked anyone working on solar or suggesting natural variation. That is why they were forced to manufacture the hockey stick to “prove” that there was no medieval warm period, because if there had been significant warming in the past without CO2, then there could be significant warming in the present which was not caused by CO2, and did not necessitate mythical “feedback” multipliers and did not require the destruction of western economies to “save” the world.
They could do that with past climate, because they controlled how they interpreted the tree rings. The could decide how much warming they could attribute to any given change in tree ring size. In short they could remove the medieval warm period by scaling down the temperature change for any given change in tree ring size ... except for the inconvenient fact that this bogus temperature record no longer matched the real record when we had actual temperature measurements hence the infamous “hide the decline” scandal.
So, it is now impossible for them to explain the 21st century pause without admitting that there is significant natural variation similar in magnitude to the change they say must be due to CO2. They cannot simultaneously argue that CO2 is the sole cause of climate change and therefore climate must “continue to change” as it did in the 20th century “due to CO2” AND explain why it hasn’t changed in the 21st century!
Gotcha!
Addendum
...what am I talking about? “they can’t argue both black and white”...I’ve talked to warmist for years and they do it all the time. Logic defies them: that is why they are warmists!