Global Warming ain't my thing, folks. But I'm a skeptic, and when more and more people repeat a theory that they can't prove, and not enough skepticism is expressed on the other side, I feel obligated to say something. I'm no scientist, but I can still read words.

The latest Global Warming scare story -- that the Gulf Stream is slowing and this could trigger an "Ice Age" -- is apparently based on some inconclusive readings taken by a research student working for professors Harry Bryden and Stuart Cunningham. The following is from Professor Bryden's press release:

The Atlantic Ocean overturning that maintains Europe's moderate climate has slowed by 30 per cent according to scientists from the National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton in research published today in Nature (Thursday, 1 December 2005).

Professor Harry Bryden, Dr Stuart Cunningham and University of Southampton research student Hannah Longworth have been researching the flow of the Atlantic Ocean across latitude 25 degrees north - comparing measurements across the Atlantic taken in 2004 with records from 1957, 1981, 1992 and 1998. Ocean flow is measured in Sverdrups, equivalent to one million tonnes of water a second. The team estimate a decrease in the overturning from 20 Sv in earlier surveys to 14 Sv in 2004.

Paul at Wizbang (after demonstrating that the assertions are bad science and worse logic) concludes that Bryden's claims are so shallow that they're not worth debunking.

The problem is that these claims are repeated over and over, like a religious litany. And I am sick and tired of seeing them spun as scientific facts.

While the Guardian recites the Bryden claims almost as holy writ, the BBC at least acknowledges that the research is unconfirmed and inconclusive, and that even if it is confirmed, it wouldn't prove the process was human-induced:

The NOC researchers admit that the case is not yet proven.

The analysis involves only five sets of measurements, made in 1957, 1981, 1992 and 1998 from ships, and in 2004 from a line of research buoys tethered to the ocean floor.

Even if the trend is confirmed by further data, it could be down to natural variability rather than human-induced global temperature change.

"This issue of variability is very important," said Harry Bryden, "and we do not have any good grasp of it.

"Models can predict it, but we think we ought to go out and measure it."

It is probably no coincidence that the editors of Nature, who are no slouches when it comes to publicity, have published Dr Bryden's paper in the week that a meeting in Montreal is reviewing the implementation of the Kyoto protocol on climate change. But even if Kyoto were implemented in full, it would not save the conveyor belt if it really is slowing down.

As is the Global Warming theory -- which seems to be transformed into fact by a process of repetition more than anything else.

What worries me about the spread of this latest idea (Global Warming can usher in an Ice Age) is that any temperature fluctuations at all -- up or down -- will tend to be seen as "proof."

If it's too warm next year in London, why, obviously the cause will be Bush's Global Warming. If it's too cool, that's Bush's Global Warming Ice Age.

This echoes Mickey Kaus' economic model, which might as well be called the Law of Insidious Despair:

"It's indeed deeply disturbing to learn that higher gas prices have held down demand, causing those prices to fall back to a level at which demand begins to rise again! It's almost as if some insidious law was at work--as prices rise, demand declines! As supply increases, prices fall! You can't win!"

No matter what happens, no matter what data are released, no matter which way markets move, a pall of pessimism hangs over the economy.

It is amazing. Everything is negative. When bond yields rise, it is considered bad for the housing market and the consumer. But if bond yields fall and the yield curve narrows toward inversion, that is bad too, because an inverted yield curve could signal a recession.

Why not put economists in charge of Global Warming?

Um, maybe because some economists might come along and apply an economic model to show that Global Warming is bogus:

After four years of one of the most rigorous peer reviews ever, Canadian Ross McKitrick and another of us (Michaels) published a paper searching for "economic" signals in the temperature record. McKitrick, an economist, was initially piqued by what several climatologists had noted as a curiosity in both the U.N. and satellite records: statistically speaking, the greater the GDP of a nation, the more it warms. The research showed that somewhere around one-half of the warming in the U.N. surface record was explained by economic factors, which can be changes in land use, quality of instrumentation, or upkeep of records. This worldwide study added fuel to a fire started a year earlier by the University of Maryland's Eugenia Kalnay, who calculated a similar 50 percent bias due to economic factors in the U.S. records.

So, to all who worry about global warming, to all who think that people threatening to blow up millions to get their political way is no big deal by comparison, chill out. The science is settled. The "skeptics" -- the strange name applied to those whose work shows the planet isn't coming to an end -- have won.

Sigh.

I still remember the good old days in California, when droughts were accompanied by heavy rains which caused flooding, and we were told that we were still in a drought -- despite the flood!

Lucky for the people who wrote the Bible that Noah didn't live in California, or he'd have had to build his Ark to escape the Great Drought (now known to be caused by Global Warming).

Hey wait a minute! They have Global Warming on Mars, don't they?

That means that there's no room left for escapist dreaming, not even if Noah built his Ark this way:

MORE: At the risk of sounding like a relativist, in terms of geologic time, the discussion of recent climate patterns is an exercise in frivolity:

All of this discussion of extremely short term weather patterns is ridiculous, as our longest human recorded temperature measurements are comparable to a pixel sized dot on a large movie theatre-sized screen. Geologists routinely think in terms of hundreds of thousands of years when we look at weather patterns, like the ice ages.

I will never forget my freshman Paleontology class at U.C. Berkeley in 1972. A professor who'd devoted a great deal of time to studying climate patterns said it was a mistake to predict an Ice Age, or to refer to it in the past tense, because in his view we were still in it, and that what we call the "Recent" period happens to be one of the warmer blips.

(Not that people who are interested in the past few decades would be particularly concerned about Geologic Time.)

MORE: Here's a link to similar Geologic relativism. I know that many sorts of collectivists seek to blame man for a whole host of climates, but the more they try and the louder they yell, the more I suspect that they're motivated by ambition and power. (Even science has been known to be influenced by such things....)