What Happened to what happened to global warming?

There is much fuss and bru-ha-ha over this particular BBC article titled "What happened to global warming?"

I was going to write an article that was broadly sceptical of claims that the BBC has had any kind of change of heart. I could not believe that the BBC really had invested all that time, money and energy to blatantly come down in favour of the AGW alarmism, in direct contravention of it's charter, terms and rules just to pull the biggest U turn in media history. It is NOT credible.

I may be more open to that possibility if the BBC had announced clearly, unambiguously and with authority across all of its news channels that that the pro AGW science was NOT settled, but it did not. It was a minor correspondent putting the feelers out on his blog, nothing more.

Now it would seem that my scepticism was justified.

From the amount of hype building in both the blogosphere and the mainstream media about this apparent "U turn", this BBC story was propelled to the top of the BBC "MOST POPULAR STORIES NOW" list. This has had mainstream correspondents in the "dead tree press" salivating at the prospect of exposing the BBC's discomfort at being exposed so widely.

However, as I checked the "MOST POPULAR STORIES NOW" to write this article, the "What happened to global warming" story has vanished from the list!

Is this credible? With the world waking this morning to the biggest BBC U-turn in decades being reported ever wider throughout the world's mainstream media, (with accompanying links) one would logically reason that this would INCREASE the number of hits to that BBC page? But NO! Alas, the hits for that page have stopped! Apparently more people are interested in reading about a letter that the once legendary double act Morecambe and Wise showed that Ernie Wise wanted to break the act up in the early days.

More people are apparently interested in an obscure story about "Worthing's birdman contest"

REALLY? or has the BBC succumbed to PRESSURE FROM THE ALARMIST LOBBY AGAIN???

I do NOT believe that the BBC has done a U turn at all. It was only a sop to it's charter to prove impartiality. They have to run a "sceptical" article every now and then even though they later amend, or contradict it completely.

When the BBC news announces an official change, THEN I would believe that they have changed and change they must.

However, unlike many, I do not believe that they should become climate sceptics either. The BBC should remain impartial. This means that they should merely acknowledge the glaring fact that the science is far from settled, there is NO scientific consensus on the total causes of climate change, or the amount of change caused by any particular mechanism. Then report accurately on the science of BOTH SIDES, until such a natural consensus can be found, if ever.

What is the case is that there is a terrific amount of good, sound, in-depth scientific theory that suggests that man's carbon emissions are causing our climate to change. There is also a lot of very VERY well-funded advocacy dressed up as science supporting AGW and a lot of incorrect, false and possibly deliberately fraudulent data used to support AGW.

On the other side there is a terrific amount of science and empirical evidence that supports several counter views. All views from 'there has not been ANY noticeable or scientifically significant warming' (as the historic measurements cannot be relied upon to show that the whole earth was so much cooler earlier during the last millennium). Right through to 'yes man's CO2 emissions are causing some, moderate or mild warming, but there is no sign whatever of any catastrophic warming at all'.

All these views are supported by scientific research by eminent and published scientists from across valid scientific disciplines INCLUDING climatology on ALL sides. What is LACKING is CONSENSUS!

Claiming that the science is settled, because there is consensus amongst pro-AGW supporting scientists, is NOT proof that the science is settled. No more than saying that Jesus IS the physical embodiment of God, because there is consensus amongst devout Catholics, is proof that Jesus is the actual physical embodiment of God.

And do not even get me started on the 'so-called' scientific impartiality of the peer-review publishing process which has undoubtedly prevented many sceptical scientific papers from being published without valid scientific reason.