Sorry, climate change deniers, but the global warming 'pause' still never happened | Sy... - 0 views
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Another day, another series of ridiculous and incorrect claims about global warming getting far more air than they deserve. The latest comes from none other than David Rose, a man who has serially misunderstood climate change so consistently that if he told me the sun would rise tomorrow, I'd be more inclined to believe the Earth had stopped rotating. He writes articles for the Daily Mail —it would be an insult to the fish to wrap them in this tabloid — and he uses a lot of typical techniques wielded by deniers, including cherry picking and misdirection. While he doesn't always deny global warming is happening, he does think it's not as bad as scientists say. I'll also note he has claimed the world is cooling, too, despite all the evidence (and I do mean all of it). But if you deny what the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are telling you, then in my opinion that makes you a denier.
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First, the "pause" is a claim that global warming has stopped since 1998 or so. This claim was never really true. 1998 was an unusually warm year, so if you start your measurements there it doesn't look like temperatures have risen much. But if you go back farther in time, the upward trend is very obvious. You have to look at the trend, and not short-term fluctuations!
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This shows that there can sometimes be a disconnect between the honest research of scientists and the way the public perceives that research. It's not anyone's fault really; the scientists are using the best methods and practices they have to understand reality, but the public gets and processes their information differently (not in a worse way, just different). It reminds me of the trouble we get using the word "theory"; to a scientist it means an extremely well-tested and reliable idea, but to the public it means more like a "guess." Same word, different uses, and it can give someone the wrong idea when used in the wrong context.