The Green Card Trick

A new procedure has been introduced into the European parliament, to try to enliven the rather sterile and formulaic plenary “debates”, which tend to be little more than members reading short prepared speeches into the record as a basis for a press release.  During any member’s speech, another member may now raise a Green Card, to ask to pose a question.  The member speaking can take it or leave it.
 
During last week’s Copenhagen climate debate (see below), sceptics made several references to recent cold winters.  So Lib-Dem MEP Chris Davies (he’s the one who once asked the police to arrest him for possession of a small quantity of cannabis — they told him to go home and stop wasting their time) raised his green card.  The speaker gave way, and Chris asked “Whether the speaker would care to explain the difference between climate and weather?”.  He then sat down with a self-satisfied smile, clearly believing that he had struck a decisive blow for climate alarmism.
 
But it is worth recalling that the whole climate scare is largely based on two-and-a-half decades between the mid seventies and 1998, when admittedly the mean global temperature appeared to rise quite rapidly (though satellite measurements, regarded by many climatologists as much more inclusive and reliable than terrestrial data, show a much smaller rise).  Bear in mind that in 1974 the American CIA produced an internal report on the security implications of global cooling, following three decades of declining temperatures, little realising that they were on the cusp of an up-turn.
 
Warmists will argue that temperatures have been broadly trending upwards for 150 years, and they are right.  But the effect is small (only 0.7 degrees C in the past 100 years) and irregular.  It is also exactly what you would expect as the world recovers from the Little Ice Age in the 17th and 18th centuries.
 
Many climatologists see climate as cyclical, and driven by both terrestrial cycles (like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and astronomical cycles, especially solar cycles.  Temperature over the last 100 years correlates rather well with solar activity, rather poorly with atmospheric CO2 levels.  If so, this would explain why mean global temperatures have been static or declining since 1998.  Given that the sun seems to be entering a quiet phase, many scientists are now anticipating cooling, not warming, in coming decades.
 
So we may turn Mr. Davies’ question straight back on himself.  If 25 years of warming constitute climate change, how many years of cooler “weather” does it take until he will admit that the climate cycle has turned, and that warming is not a one-way process — and still less a “runaway” process beset with “tipping points”?