We would like to apologize to our loyal readers who have provided us so much support since we first went online in December 2004. However, after listening to the compelling arguments of the distinguished speakers who participated in the Heartland Institute’s recent global warming contrarian conference, we have decided that the science is settled — in favor of the contrarians. Indeed, even IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri has now admitted that anthropogenic climate change was a massive hoax after all. Accordingly, RealClimate no longer has a reason for existence. The contrarians have made a convincing case that (a) global warming isn’t happening, (b) even if it is, its entirely natural and within the bounds of natural variability, (c) well, even if its not natural, it is modest in nature and not a threat, (d) even if anthropogenic warming should turn out to be pronounced as projected, it will sure be good for us, leading to abundant crops and a healthy environment, and (e) well, it might actually be really bad, but hey, its unstoppable anyway. (Can we get our check now?)
Good one! Got me for about 10 seconds.
And a Happy April Fools Day to you too!!!!
Scared me for a minute … .
LOL! It took me about five seconds, but ONLY because I just bought one of the blog author’s books. It would have taken me longer without that. GOOD ONE!
Not as good as the sheep albedo effect, but raised a smile anyway.
Keep up the good work!
[Response: The sheep albedo one is apparently one of the top 100 of all time…. Hard to top that. – gavin]
The email notice had me going! But I still say practical jokes are cruel!
I must tell my geologist friend to pack it up!
His talk to the ASA is at
Audio at http://www.asa3.org/ASAradio/ASA2008Miller.mp3
slides at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/meetings/georgefox2008/papers/ASA2008Miller.pdf
It is a pretty good overview of how to understand AGW.
Burgy
Ah jeez! Now I have to tell some of my student’s parents they were right!
From: 6th grade science teacher
Count me an April Fool. But Jesus knock that off.
Not funny…
From the post:
I finally see the light…
Sorry, I meant “white.” It is snowing outside right now in Seattle, so obviously global warming couldn’t possibly be taking place. If you will excuse me, Moira wants me to brave the snow, returning with a latte and a ham and cheese croissant.
Gosh, I feel so relieved. Lets be sure to call the papers
Ok ,
it comes a time one must admit: THEY, the powers that be , are correct,
sorry guys,
P.S.
take a coat, it’s cold and a glaciation is on the way, just around the corner : )))))
But for a split second….
Well, this explains a lot – obviously, the folks at realclimate are paid stooges of the honchos at NASA who refuse to make the DSCOVR documents public:
Yes, it is all a big conspiracy, isn’t it? I think the biofuel folks are behind it – or is it the solar photovoltaic folks? They are using their vast political power to leverage a future of total human servitude to corporate ideology, while the independent coal miners and oil roughnecks are returned to a life of poverty and misery.
Submitted to Counterpunch, Apr 1, 2009
Getting hot in here… 8)
Damn! You got my hopes up for nothing!
Yikes, the subject line scared me! I already had formulated a long email to you how in the world you could abandon us in such a crucial time. Every year I keep being fooled by some cruel people like you ;-) One day I’ll learn, maybe, but that’d take away all the fun of it.
For anyone who is getting bored and impatient with the slow-moving pace of the anthropogenic global warming disaster, here’s a potential catastrophe that could devastate civilization as we know it in a matter of moments, with little or no warning:
Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe
By Michael Brooks
New Scientist
23 March 2009
Excerpt:
Unfortunately it’s not an April Fool’s joke.
I expect Marc Morano will be quoting this on Senator Inhofe’s web site.
finally we can now concentrate on disputing gravity
Climate change denialists have been an April Fool’s Day joke on us everyday for years.
seen this?Antarctic drilling yields global warming insights
By William Mullen
RealClimate’s an inestimable resource. Sorry to see it go.
Jim Bouldin wrote in 9:
Same here. My first reaction:
8-O
I could actually feel my heart skip a beat. My cardiologist will probably end up writing you a letter…
*
To my wife, “Yes dear, I know how much you hate the stocking cap. Take it off? Right away!”
You swineherds! That first sentence actually had me going for a minute. I was thinking, “Oh no, they’ve got to shut down for some reason.” Then I read the second sentence and remembered the date. Ya got me!
Wait, isn’t there supposed to be a video of sheep albedo changes here somewhere?
My birthday is today so I am used to these types of jokes. But, this one scared me. Especially since so many people actually believe those statements! Here is a website from Oregon which proves that your capitulation is long overdue. Slyly named to look at though it is the state of Oregon cite and with no names or organizational affiliation on it: http://www.sustainableoregon.com/
Bob
Yup. Had me going for a moment. Crichton wins from the grave.
Maybe there was an albedo effect as all us RC readers collectively blanched? (Us, sheep? Never.)
Crying out loud, I almost had a heart attack when I saw the email. I always forget the date …
You’ve finally come to your senses!As any fool can plainly see global warming isn’t happening,or maybe it is and it will be a boon to mankind and all other flora and fauna. Who needs coral reefs or spring runoff from the Himalayas or non-acidic oceans,anyway?
Sea level rise will enable navigable waters to reach to a greater extent. Ships will dock at our doorsteps or in our living rooms.Winter sports like skiing were for the birds anyway. It’s about time we gave up the ghost and admitted to what perceptive folks like James Imhofe saw all along. Happy April First!!
You forgot:
e.b) it will be more costly to invest ~1% of global GDP for the next decades, in order to mitigate GW, than to build/rebuild massive infrastructures, reform agriculture, etc (all known to be cheap and non-disruptive endeavors) … when the problems have already happened and
e.c) doing something about GW is a selfish western preoccupation that will deny the 3rd world its brilliant future development. Yes it is proven (i.e. I read it on the internet, somewhere) that without the lobbying of greenies-liberal-commies, even the poorest countries in the world would already have economies comparable to the western ones … (well actually it might be the case following the latest economical developments :-P )
RE: 24
Bob, what do you expect from a site that spells references as:
Refrences?
http://www.sustainableoregon.com/noproof.html
I’m still chuckling…
He’ll add the contributors’ names to his List of 700.
well, guys…it was a good run while it lasted. we had ’em going for a while there. i think we all knew in the back of our minds it just couldn’t last. thanks all you scientists here for all those great fake arguments and graphs and stuff – you almost had me believing AGW was real! there were just too many of us in on it for it to last forever.
Ahw, Ya’ll had to go and spill the beans! And we had we had so many folks going with such a wonderful hoax.
A gold mine of lines to be taken out of context… ;-)
Here is a revolutionary plan to reduce atmospheric carbon concentrations, well suited to the day of your annoucement:
http://www.sindark.com/2009/04/01/plants-animals-and-climate-change/
My first thought was: Geesh, this is what happens when I stop reading a blog for a few months, it goes under (sure, it’s my readership that makes the difference). But the minute I saw Heartland Institute I suddenly realized that one of my legs was longer than the other.
Genius.
Nice to know this scam is over. Now I can focus on my real passion: proving that evolution theory is wrong & must be replaced by Intelligent Design.
Now, what did I do with that irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum?
Love it! You had me until “Heartland.”
Now that the AGW grant gravy train has dried up, I will need to get together with a few of my research buddies and lay the groundwork for making up another plausible threat to mankind so we can get more research money! Oh, I know–zombie nanobots! Be sure and look for my groundbreaking paper in Science in about 6 months, and start cranking up those grant proposals.
Congratulations! I have always known that some of you are sane.
Just kidding, too. ;-)
[Response: Well actually you predicted we would either all be dead or in jail by the end of 2005. You may need to still work on that whole ‘prediction’ thing. – gavin]
Meanwhile, on this side of the Pond, this massive hoax about global warming that isn’t happening is causing all manner of weird effects in dear old Blighty’s wildlife. Even butterflies in southern England are now changing their spots as you can see here:
http://www.naturescalendar.org.uk/findings/newbutterfly.htm
I’m just glad the Heartland Institute never got to hear of this one,
if they had they would no doubt have concluded that,
“(d) even if anthropogenic warming should turn out to be pronounced as projected, it will sure be good for us, leading to abundant crops and a healthy environment, and” … lots of nice new butterflies.
SecularAnimist – have you seen the latest on that?
They say Krakatoa is going to blow as well… possibly part of a 150-200 year natural cycle that may be a major climate driver – triggered by extreme solar flares which send neutrino-type thingys deep into the Earth, where they trigger chain reactions that lead to giant eruptions – something to do with trace levels of uranium in the lava melt – and this is pretty well shown by the correlation of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption with the 1859 Carrington solar flare event. From that we can calculate a robust response time of 24 years – and try running that against the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum. Stunning, isn’t it?
In fact, if you take all the major volcanic eruptions of the past two centuries and put them on a timeline, you see something startling:
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001439.html
The frequency of earthquakes and volcanos over time is increasing! There were only two volcanos in the 17th century, but dozens during the 20th century – sure sign of some kind of looming planetary instability.
We need to let off the pressure, is what I’m thinking – drill a big hole and let the Earth breathe a little. We might also be able to slow global warming down quite a bit, and I’m sure this will appeal to the geoengineering crowd as well.
The solution lies near the California-Nevada border, in the form of the Long Valley Caldera. Rough calculations show if you drill about a dozen mine shafts as deep as possible into the thing, and plunk megaton nuclear bombs down there, and then fire them off simultaneously, you’ll get a repeat of the Long Valley Caldera explosion of about 800,000 years ago – which coated everything east of it with miles of ash and injected a giant aerosol cloud into the stratosphere – the ash layer alone formed a triangle stretching from the caldera to Louisiana to North Dakota, including all of Arizona and most of Idaho and everything in between – I bet that would have a cooling factor of at least -30 W/m^2 – and you could go and do the Yellowstone Plateau at the same time – geoengineering at its finest.
China has expressed interest in this, as have people in Washington (the state), Oregon, California and Baja – but everyone else in the Northern Hemisphere is being obstructionist, not putting the welfare of the nation and the planet first – you know how that is.
Ha! (You had me convinced, also, for about 20 seconds! Good one!!!)
And for a second, warm blood ran through Mr Booker’s veins…..
I see that the sheep albedo also has a resonant effect in neural connectivity and synaptic response as evidenced by the reactions. The conclusion is obvious… time for a beer :)
I have to admit, I got more that a few smiles and chuckles out of this, though it’s hard to beat the original Sheep Albedo work based on veterinary climatology:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-sheep-albedo-feedbacki/#comment-30158
I know, I know, bad joke on my part…
Personally I would love to see Morano quote it. That would substantiate his lack of understanding for the world and make the case for just how silly the AGW denial can be.
It’s about time people realized that their perception of science is all in their mind. ;)
#38 Tom Rooney
How about asteroids, not enough money going over that way and we already have lots of movies about that one.
And yet you still can’t admit that Al Gore is fat and has a big house, where he has his secret gold machine that pays off all the scientists to lie for him.
:-)
So close, yet so far away … (Moreno is a breed of sheep!)
Actually before RC came on line I was despairing that either the climate scientists were going over to the dark side in droves (to the contrarians), possibly for filthy lucre, or were afraid to speak out due to various repercussions they might face at their universities or gov institutes. The media sure weren’t covering the issue then. And I thought I’d be one of the few environmentalists remaining, crying out in the desert about GW, with no one to believe me. It’s really been great to have RC; you guys are true heroes. (And while I can’t completely fault people for not believing me; it really boils me that they can’t believe the scientists :( )
So I first thought when I read today’s post, okay now, back to square one.
#47 dhogaza
I wonder which breed?
Geez!, I thought you were closing the site when I got the feed!…don’t ever scare me like that!
…quite funny though :)