(Playing of What a Horrible World.)
RUSH: … that says it’s just normal. ‘Scientists,’ by the way, say this.
(song continues)
RUSH: That’s Paul Shanklin as Algore, ‘What a Horrible World.’ That’s a takeoff, of course, on Louis Armstrong’s great, great song, ‘What a Wonderful World.’ Now, don’t confuse this story with the story we had yesterday. The story we had yesterday on ocean currents was scientists just discovered a new one in Australia. They never knew it was there, and my gosh, it’s making all kinds of impact on global warming, but we didn’t know it was there! Well, if they’re just learning about it now, is it in their computer models? Obviously not. This story deals with an entirely different current. ‘A massive ocean circulation pattern that plays a crucial role in shaping the world’s climate may not have been slowing down over the last few decades as scientists previously believed. This according to a study released yesterday. The perceived slowdown had been considered alarming support for computer predictions, that global warming would disrupt the planet’s heat regulation. In a single year of measurements published in today’s issue of the journal Science, the scientists found enough normal variation in the pattern to suggest that previous studies were premature in asserting a long-term trend.’
That should be ‘panic,’ long-term panic. They’re trying to create a long-term panic here. We talked this current. It’s like a conveyor belt in the ocean, and it takes warm weather across the Atlantic north towards the British islands, and then circulates it back down from Florida in that area, and it takes warm water north and brings cold water south, and they thought this current was slowing down and even stopping. It would have had a dramatic effect if it was right. It would have a dramatic effect, particularly on the weather in the British islands. But it’s not slowing down. It’s a normal circulation. So a panic was created over nothing. I think I’m right — I usually am right when I think I’m right because I’m usually right even when I think I’m wrong, but I think I’m right on this. I think this current gets a lot of play in Algore’s movie. (interruption) It does? Thank you. Snerdley, did you see it? Oh, okay. He rented it. This is an LA Times story, and they don’t mention the Algore movie in this story, but there is a version in the Associated Press that does talk about it.
Now, here’s a question: When will scientists ever learn? This stems from the arrogance and conceit that human beings are capable of. These scientists see some change in nature and then fret over it being a long-term trend. If you have a template out there (a narrative, if you will) that man is destroying the planet by warming the climate, and we’ve only got a few short years to stop this, and then you see something that you think is a change in nature that’s never, ever happened before — which, of course, is not possible. There is nothing that can happen in nature that has never happened before, but our arrogance and conceit makes us think, ‘Maybe it’s happened before but they’re worse more than ever because of us!’ So they see this change in the current, and then they fret over it being part of a ‘long-term trend’ that they turn into a panic. First, we were told that a 30% reduction in water flow in the North Atlantic current in the last 50 years could mean a mini-ice age for Europe. ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God, no! An ice age! Oh, no!’ Now the scientists tell us, ‘Never mind. We found that the strength of the current can actually fluctuate by a factor of eight over a single year.’
It’s Emily Litella time here. ‘Never mind.’ Folks, you need to have an age-old attitude about this stuff as global warming science. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’ Fool me three times, you must be a scientist.