All in Bali as the temperature Falls

Well, the tax-funded jamboree that was the climate conference in Bali inevitably drew the required scare stories all coincidentally launched just as the conference hit. We have the artic icecaps to melt away enitrely, this time by 2013 (which isn't far away chaps), various species exctinction and general doom-laden stuff all capped off with "its getting warmer even faster than we expected" - a statement we can now generally wheel out every time the IPPC mulit-multi-million dollar event runs into town. The new graphs point upwards, you have to strain the neck to see the peaks - mostly kicking around the +5 to +7 degrees centigrade by the far off 2100. Certainly no room for pauses in these graphs, its up, up, up and away. A quite noticeable 0.05 to 0.07 degrees per year. Every year. Year after year.

And now in 2008. So that will be up, up, up and away then? Up by 0.07? No. Up by 0.05? No. Up at all?

Err. No.

Up on last year? No
Up on 2006? 2005? 2004? 2003? 2002? No.

In fact lower than the last 6 years.

And the decadal average increase continues to mosy along at the pace it has been doing since the switch in temperature direction in the 1970's. Of course, that increase wont kill half the planet and doesnt justify the $2bn spend per annum that is now at stake for those at the IPCC, setting aside the literal trillion dollar stakes at play in the lobbyists for grants in new age fuels (see ethanol effect on worldwide grain prices - some people are making a lot of money).

Obviously undeterred by this somewhat contradictory and irritating fact;

The Hadley Centre's head of climate prediction, Vicky Pope, who is at the Bali talks, said the data

"confirmed the need for swift action to combat further rises in global temperatures because of human behaviour."

"What we are seeing is a confirmation of the warming trend seen by the IPCC reports,"

said Micael Jarraud overseer of the 'landmark' IPCC assessment.

And, well they would, would't they? Not exactly a career-enhancing approach to say much else really. Not when you are surrounded by an audience that erupts into cheering and standing ovations when Al Gore makes a speech. That'll be all the hard-headed fact-based scientists then?

I will leave this subject at the start of 2008 with wise words from professor Patrick J. Michaels, much reviled head of environmental science at the University of Virginia.

"... the resultant exaggerations become tiresome, and life goes on. Decades of doom-saying about Global Warming collide with decades of prosperity. People notice and increasingly disregard science and scientists, a process that has already invaded several aspects of our lives. This is the ultimate tragedy that this predictable distortion of global warming causes: a society that can no longer rely on the wisdom of science can only be governed by irrationality and fear."