Torture still endorsed by US government

Geologist Professor Ian Plimer, describing the computer models used by global warming alarmists:

‘I’m a natural scientist ... collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Meanwhile, two US scientists have explained the severe shortcomings of computer climate models.

Gary Strand, a software engineer at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), admitted climate model software “doesn't meet the best standards available” in a comment he posted on the website Climate Audit.

“As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn't meet the best standards available. We've made quite a lot of progress, but we've still quite a ways to go,” Strand wrote on July 5, 2009, according to the website WattsUpWithThat.com.

Strand's candid admission promoted WattsUpWithThat's skeptical Meteorologist Anthony Watts to ask the following question:

“Do we really want Congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on 'software [that] doesn't meet the best standards available?'”

Meteorologist Watts also critiqued the current climate models, noting, “NASA GISS model E written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse.

Another Plimer quote:

Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.

See my own post, "Environmentalist religion explained." As I wrote then, it's appropriate to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Update: What about 55 million years ago?

A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.
Previous research into this period, called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, estimates the planet's surface temperature blasted upwards by between five and nine degrees Celsius (nine and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few thousand years.

The Arctic Ocean warmed to 23 C (73 F), or about the temperature of a lukewarm bath.

How PETM happened is unclear but climatologists are eager to find out, as this could shed light on aspects of global warming today.

I blame the cave men. Don't try to object that there were no cave men 55 million years ago. Doesn't matter. It's still humans' fault.

Oh, and did you know that the earth has had polar ice caps for only about 20 percent of its age? "Normal" temps, on geological scale, are those too warm to support polar ice.