"Global Warming" in Europe

Here we go again. "Global warming" is destroying the Earth, our way of life, etc.

Europe's four hottest years on record were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, the agency said Tuesday.

Ten percent of Alpine glaciers disappeared during the summer of 2003 alone," the report said.

"At current rates, three-quarters of Switzerland's glaciers will have melted by 2050. Europe has not seen climate changes on this scale for 5,000 years."

The more I read these stories the more ridiculous they seem. OK, so the last few years were the hottest on record. What about the years before there were records? Did global climate change happen then? If so, what was the cause then? This paragraph from the article sums it all up:

In the 20th century, the average global temperature rose 0.7 C (1.25 F)...

True. In 100 years the average global temperature increased by less than one degree.

...as a result of burning coal, gas and coal -- the carbon fuels that are mainly to blame for the rise.

Yet scientists make this jump. Why? What about the last ice age (~10,000 years ago)? What made the Earth cool down and warm up then?

The article continues to describe the silly Kyoto treaty, which itself admits that it does not do enough to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to make any difference. What a silly treaty.

Here is an article that I linked to earlier this month about groupthink within "global warming" scientific groups.

Panelist and Colorado State University professor of atmospheric science William M. Gray, a hurricane authority, announced that he thinks that the biggest contributor to global warming is the fact that "we're coming out of a little ice age," and that the warming trend will end in six to eight years.

Said Gray, sagely: "Consensus science isn't science."

No lie. In fact, it's a bizarre argument. Why do global-warming believers keep pushing this everyone-agrees line when consensus uber alles is so, well, unacademic? The ideal should not be scientists who think in lockstep, but those in the proud mold of the skeptic, who takes a hard look at the data and proves conventional wisdom wrong.

The article describes in detail how an atmospheric scientists studied 928 research abstracts and every single one of them pointed to "global warming" as man-made. Interesting, isn't it? Not one dissenting voice?

Anyway, enough for now. For more on my rants about global warming, see here.