Gosh, who do I believe?

Who do I believe:

a.  the 2011 "stagflation" flag waving economist who regularly shills for donations to his* prominent anti climate science "think tank" (even though its financials indicate it has a retained surplus of $1.5 million) who rubbishes climate scientists and gets a thrill every time he reads something about the "pause" in global average temperatures.  (The IPA's latest brilliant idea is for numbskulls to donate $400 to get their name on the back of a book about climate change with contributions by the sharpest scientific minds in the world:  Andrew Bolt, Delingpole, Monckton, Roskam, Watts, etc.   As someone says in comments "Can’t see much point in this. Looks too much like preaching to the choir."   Is the IPA finally reaching the limits of separating fools from their money?  The true scandal about this is that donations are tax deductible.)

You see, what really annoys me about Davidson is his disingenuousness - he is running the line now that people are only being reasonable in being reluctant to take economic action like carbons taxes or ETS's when they see that scientists are saying that there is a "pause" the causes of which are still being investigated.

He completely fails to mention in posts like that that he personally is actively involved in promoting in the public the complete disbelief  that climate change is a real and serious problem that deserves a politic response now.    And the people he helps promotes to the public (see his shilling of the IPA book) are not scientifically credible at all.  They aren't even scientists in most cases.

He is essentially, involved a vain project of arguing that because he thinks he's being reasonable, despite not believing a clear scientific consensus, everyone else who agrees with him is also being reasonable.

He claims "success" because he (and his buddies) manage to convince some fools to join him in his ideologically motivated foolishness.   That just intensifies the degree of foolishness on display.

or:

b.       Actual scientists:

US and British scientific academies said Wednesday there was a clear consensus that climate change is real and will have serious disruptive effects on the planet.

The US National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society said they were making the joint declaration in hopes of moving the public debate forward—to the question of how the world responds, instead of whether climate change is happening.

"It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing the Earth's climate," the joint publication said.

"The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes."

The academies cautioned that science inherently cannot settle every detail and that debate remained on some specifics, including how much climate change is linked to extreme weather events.

But it said scientists were "very confident" that the world will warm further in the next century and that a rise by just a few degrees Celsius would have "serious impacts" that are expected to include threats to coasts and food production.

I also note that scientists and others are making an increasingly clear case that "the pause" is in fact rather illusory.

Have a look at David Appell's post in which he takes all the graphs from Tamino's recent post looking at how you can graph the recent temperature record.

Then note that the number of extremely hot days over land is still on the way up, regardless of what the global average has been doing for the last 10 to 20 years:

Extremely hot temperatures over land have dramatically and unequivocally increased in number and area despite claims that the rise in global average temperatures has slowed over the past 10 to 20 years.
Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and international colleagues made the finding when they focused their research on the rise of temperatures at the extreme end of the spectrum where impacts are felt the most.
"It quickly became clear, the so-called "hiatus" in global average temperatures did not stop the rise in the number, intensity and area of extremely hot days" said one of the paper's authors Dr Lisa Alexander.
"Our research has found a steep upward tendency in the temperatures and number of extremely hot days over land and the area they impact, despite the complete absence of a strong El Niño since 1998."

The slow down in the global average surface rise seems to be increasingly well understood in terms of ocean winds and their effect on heat transfer in the oceans (which are warming) and the under-appreciation of the effects of volcanoes.  Neither of which can anyone really expect to be permanent features of the next century.

I just hope for the next El Nino to come sooner rather than later, for the sake of getting denialists further scientifically marginalised than they already are.

*  in the sense that he is a "senior fellow" of it - not that he personally runs or controls it