All politicians, bureaucrats and scientists are prone to ludicrous exaggerations, lame mistruths and outright lies as techniques to frighten and push the general public towards accepting an agenda...and leftists, socialists, marxists, progressives and liberals are really exceptional talents in this art of public deception...some very recent climate-liar examples:
"Climate change is the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face" (Hillary Clinton)..."confronting climate change” is “a duty or responsibility laid down in scriptures" (John Kerry)...“Climate change is so much more consequential than ISIS ever was" (Leading Democrat consultant)...“we are not very far” from the point where climate change should be declared an international public health emergency" (UN's Christiana Figueres).....
Any political success that is achieved by deceit, hyperbole and hysteria always requires a sacrifice of the empirical evidence and unbiased science.
Yet it is scientific facts and methodologies that ultimately win...it follows that the public can only be mislead for so long.
Despite the extremist hyperbole and doomsday-cult scenario hysteria, the science of climate change is rather mundane, from a long-term view: it gets cold and, OMG!, then it gets hot, with some periods of in-between. Climate change is constantly in play; and humans can no more stop its chaotic version of ebbs and flows, let alone ever controlling a single cloud, thunderstorm, hurricane or tornado.
This chart, from the science journal New Scientist, is a prime exhibit of real-world scientific evidence that reveals how inconsequential today's climate change is compared to all previous climate change.
From the chart, it is clear that extreme climate change is a constant; there have been much higher and lower temperatures in the past; modern climate temperatures are not excessive in the least; and, the purported human-induced, "dangerous" modern temperature warming is only a fraction of past natural increases.
We say purported, because our existence is taking place during a global cooling phase (look at chart closely and note the pale blue areas) which is rather long-in-the-tooth, and at some point would normally rebound to warmer temperatures, just naturally. Indeed, the entire warming since the Little Ice Age is likely to be predominantly a natural response to the prior millenniums of extended cooling.
As the chart's inset clarifies, the modern warming since the end of 1949 has been very modest, being completely within the bounds of previous ancient and geological warmings that have been identified by empirical science.
And the "tipping point" warming has become even more modest during the 21st century:
- The atmosphere has not experienced statistically significant warming since March 1996.
- The oceans have not experienced statistically significant warming since August 1994.
- The globe has not experienced statistically significant warming since November 1996.
Memo to GOP elites: Do not just passively accept the climate-liars' exaggerations, hyperbole and factual misrepresentations. The public wants the science facts; they want evidence that challenges the mindless, ludicrous fear-mongering. Crush the Democrats' hysteria with the real science; and denigrate their junk science predictions generated from the failed computer climate models. Facilitate the flow of scientific empirical evidence and debate - hmm...it's called educating the public, eh?
Additional historical, modern and regional temperature charts.
Note: Added the red and blue lines to above New Science chart. The added lines represent the HadCRUT4 global 60-month average temperatures at December 1855, December 1949 and July 2014.