They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.
Douglas Adams, “Life, the Universe and Everything”
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When the winds fell, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at the midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that, too, would often be taken as a sign.
If there’s one thing cults are good at, it’s explaining away inconvenient facts. Especially such inconvenient facts as the world failing to end as predicted. As the classic Peter Cook sketch, The End of the World concludes: “Same time again tomorrow, brothers — we must get a winner some day”.
Scientists, despite their pretensions otherwise, are often little better. Consider the saga of “epicycles”. These were used to explain away the observed fact that celestial bodies simply didn’t behave as they should if their orbits were circular as assumed. As more and more contrary evidence mounted, scientists simply piled on more and more epicycles.
The Climate Cult is both quasi-religious cult and pseudo-science.
And boy are they good at conjuring up epicycles.
The Covid pandemic shutdowns in South Asia greatly reduced the concentration of short-lived cooling particles in the air, while the concentration of long-lived greenhouse gases was barely affected. Researchers were thus able to see how reduced emissions of air pollution leads to cleaner air but also stronger climate warming.
That’s right: we have to reduce emissions to fight global warming, even though reduced emissions leads to more global warming.
To be fair, there’s a kinda-sorta sense in what they’re saying.
It is well known that emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides and other air pollutants lead to the formation of aerosols (particles) in the air that can offset, or mask, the full climate warming caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
So far, so good. But the only problem is that the very brief drop in particulate pollution during the pandemic tells us nothing about emissions and global warming.
We are told, after all, that the minimum period of a meaningful climate cycle is 30 years (it was 20, until some naughty little boys noticed that there hadn’t been any global warming for over 20 years: that settled science is so often awfully unsettled, after all). So, a mere two years or less of lowered particulate pollution just isn’t long enough.
Nor, really, is a climate observatory that’s only been in operation for two-thirds of a climate cycle.
At Hanimaadhoo, a measuring station in the northernmost Maldives off the coast of India, researchers have been measuring the atmospheric composition and radiation for soon two decades (Measurements reveal the impact of air pollution on climate and health in southern Asia) […]
A new article in the scientific journal NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science shows that the concentrations of polluting short-lived air particles decreased significantly, while the concentrations of longer-lived greenhouse gases were barely affected in the air mass over South Asia.
Well, duh. That’s kinda how you’d expect “short-lived” and “longer-lived” entities to behave.
The headline result of their observations mightn’t exactly say what they want it to, either.
Measurements taken at the same time over the northern Indian Ocean revealed a seven percent increase in solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, thus increasing temperatures.
Stockholm University
In other words, solar radiation really is the primary driver of temperatures.
It also means that climate models, which treat solar radiation as a constant, really are useless for making real-world predictions.
Oh, shut up — and throw another epicycle in the model until we get the result we want.