Requiem For A Theory

"The science is was settled."
Global Warming, c. 1985-2013

This year will be remembered as the one in which the wheels finally came off AGW. Not scientifically--as you all know, that happened a long time ago--but in terms of the public propping-up it's been relying on. Even its allies are starting to abandon it. Feel free to celebrate.

Again, this collapse has been in the making for a couple of years now. It's been pretty much an open secret for a while that the global temperature rise, whatever consensus it might have had, has been stalled for a decade or more, and an increasing number of scientists have begun to publicly speculate on why reality got the models wrong. Solar activity, fluctuating weather patterns, imperfect predictions--confident as the proponents continued to sound officially, you could tell they were getting worried.

But more recently, the news has gotten even worse. Last week, a leaked report from those high priests of Saving The World (tm), the IPCC, flatly admitted that their forecasts of temperature increase were, to put it politely, flat busted. Not only that, they also conceded that much of the current evidence--such as an increase in Antarctic sea ice--would lead one in the opposite direction. They even acknowledged, for the first time, the so-called Medieval Warm Period, which had high global temperatures without the burning of fossil fuels. Now mind you, they wouldn't come right out and admit they were full of crap. In fact, they claimed they were more certain than ever that global warming was real, that it was man-made, and that it would continue to get worse.

Thing is, a lot of scientists are now coming flat out and saying they don't buy it. One high-ranking climatologist called the report's conclusions "incomprehensible" while another described it as a lesson in how not to use the scientific method. And these weren't even the long-term skeptics. The proponents, displaying their usual penchant for classy and above-board debate, replied to these comments by saying the critics should be murdered by their children to defend the future generation, or something.

Meanwhile, contrary evidence from other sources continues to pile up. Astronomers have noted, after observing sunspots and the like, that solar activity is at a 100-year low, provoking concerns from a few quarters that we might actually be heading into another "Little Ice Age." Incidentally, computer models couldn't even get this right--they had been predicting that 2013 would be a peak year for such activity.

Now, none of this is particularly new or surprising, at least here. But as with the scientists mentioned above, it's worth noting how many of AGW's defenders are now beginning to, if not bail outright, then at least dial back their support for it. Governments in particular are hopping off the bandwagon: the Czech Republic is cutting all stimulus funds for renewable energy from this year's budget, while Germany, despite its continuing to pay official lip service to green power and the like, is quietly closing down a number of its solar and wind plants. Australia, having welcomed a new Conservative government, has gone even further and abolished one of its climate agencies.

I think we're about at the point where we can declare victory in the climate-change battle. It'll be a few years before the IPCC and other green activists realize their defeat (and of course they'll never admit it), but there's really no way they can come back from this, in the sense that they won't be able to advocate further controls on the economy in the name of AGW. It's all but over. So give yourself a high-five.

Just remember, they'll probably come up with something else to push. But until then.