Three facts about climate change

Just a few months ago, 20 climate scientists met in San Francisco as part of the SCAR AntClim21 Research Programme. During a discussion of Antarctic and Southern Ocean climate modelling, they noted that:

Evaluating the overall response of the ice sheet under changing climatic conditions is a major challenge….Whilst progress has been made in ice sheet modelling, significant uncertainties in 21^st century projections remain due to potential non-linear feedbacks.

So perhaps the UNSW media release over-egged the alarmist pudding. After all, it appears that more (and more) research is still required 'to gain a better understanding of plausible future trajectories of regional Antarctic climate'.

Fact three: There are only two infallible laws of climate science: (i) the squeaky wheel gets the oil; and (ii) the level of high-anxiety over (allegedly) 'dangerous' anthropogenic climate change increases exponentially with the decline in temporal proximity to the next UN climate conference, ceteris paribus.

Prediction: even if ice flows appear in the Seine later this month, it will be spun as 'consistent with a warming world' to the 50,000 delegates at Folies Climat 2015.

As Copernicus, Galileo and others discovered, dislodging a powerful paradigm is not easy. Especially an apocalyptic one entrenched in the public mind by a frenetic media, a complicit Academy, and a lot of folk dazzled by the loot now accumulating in the UN Green Climate Fund.

Playing atmospheric charades for two decades has been a lot of fun. So has the partying in one exotic location after another – and the endless squabbling about 'climate reparations'. Time now to prepare for the end-game. Will our political class agree to a transfer of wealth unparalleled in history – and underwrite a tsunami of 'climate refugees'?