a conversation on Neven's Arctic Sea Ice blog

[ljgeoff]

I'm kinda in love with Neven because of his arctic ice blog. It's full of thoughtful amateurs and peppered with semiprofessionals and scientists. This conversation struck me today:

NeilT wrote: I notice that the press is full of the July temps being comprehensively higher than 98, finally putting to bed the whole denialist "pause" rubbish.

Given that this is also not a huge outlier year as 98 was, we should see these temps as normal by 2020.

It would be interesting to compare the 98 melt season with the 2015 melt season. Just to rub in what is going on and crush any last idiocy of a pause...

Remko Kampen replied:Better not bet on that, NeilT. Climate revisionism is already preparing for another 'hiatus' because of this year. And, of course, 'Ice Age cometh', the latter meme will revive hugely by November.

And it still works perfectly. This year some more governments got couped by fossil fuel industry. Spain, who actually punishes solar panel use. Holland, where percentage renewables is less than half the EU average and dropped second year in a row. Canada, burning books. Ireland, who just got a secretary of energy/climate who works for Shell and is actively killing renewable initiatives there, subsidies down the drain. Australia whose subsidies to Abbott of Big Coal amount to almost 2% of Australian GDP this year. Forget it - gloat when Florida gets removed from the map thru SLR plus hurricane, because that kind of thing is the planet's only chance now.

Meantime's climate revisionist's strategies focus on 'the numbers are fudged' or, well, El Niño 'so of course it's a hot year' never mind past Niño years that weren't that hot - they conceal trends which looks stupid to us but is simply smart because they are believed.

Kampen's comment is a succinct outline of why I despair. There are good things happening, but not enough to make a big enough difference.