Climate scientist's astounding series of U-turns

Golly gosh, there are times when it feels like I've slipped into a parallel universe. The recent shift in the ground under our feet relating to climate change leaves one almost with that giddy and disoriented feeling you'd imagine from travelling between different universes or dimensions. Now the BBC's Roger Harrabin has put a series of questions to Professor Phil Jones, the currently suspended director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. His answers are nothing short of astounding. He concedes most, if not all, of the points made by moderate climate sceptics over the years. Watts Up With That? summarises it thusly: Specifically, the Q-and-As confirm what many skeptics have long suspected: Neither the rate nor magnitude of recent warming is exceptional. There was no significant warming from 1998-2009. According to the IPCC we should have seen a global temperature increase of at least 0.2°C per decade. The IPCC models may have overestimated the climate sensitivity for greenhouse gases, underestimated natural variability, or both. This also suggests that there is a systematic upward bias in the impacts estimates based on these models just from this factor alone. The logic behind attribution of current warming to well-mixed man-made greenhouse gases is faulty. The science is not settled, however unsettling that might be. There is a tendency in the IPCC reports to leave out inconvenient findings, especially in the part(s) most likely to be read by policy makers. Elsewhere at the same blog the vexed question of the trustworthiness of the surface temperature record (and how it is affected by the urban heat island effect) has now made it into The Times: A new story by Jonathan Leake in the Sunday Times puts the spotlight on surface temperature data. Above: Rome’s airport weather station.

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