Since we can’t look 50 years into the future, let’s go back and look at the actual climate forecasts from 6 to 7 years ago, and compare the global temperature forecasts to the actual observed temperatures.

Here's some science that no one with a vested political or financial interest in climate change would want you to know: The warmest year since 1934 was 1998, at the height of the strongest El Nino on record. The gold standard for CO2 measurement is taken at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. In 1998, the observatory recorded 366 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere; it steadily rose to 386 ppm in 2008. In the meantime, the earth has cooled.

If we go back to climate models from, say, 2002, what did they predict during the past 7 years as CO2 was steadily rising?


Click to enlarge.

As you can see, the IPCC models -- the ones blessed by the UN -- predicted that global temperatures would be steadily warming, but instead they've been cooling. Let’s recall what Feynmann said: If the data don't agree with the theory, the theory's wrong -- regardless of a widespread public desire to blame Exxon (XOM), or Chevron (CVX), or Hummers (GM) for global warming.

The observed temperature data don't match what the model predicts. In physics (my field), we'd look at both the experiment and the data to see whether there was something wrong with the experiment's design, or whether the data were right and the theory wrong. Either way, we'd step back and reevaluate everything.

What we certainly wouldn't do is cram 300 pages of amendments through Congress at 3:00 a.m. and force a vote the next day.