In 2022 a study by scientists Joel Tenenbaum and Paul Williams argued that climate change was making air turbulence worse, which meant airline passengers would be in for bumpier and bumpier rides, assuming their governments even still let them fly. Of course the usual alarmist media suspects were all over it, confidently declaring that air travel was being ruined due to warming. But the study was based on only 18 years of data. When three more years of data were collected, bump bump bump the trend disappeared. So the authors, to their great credit, wrote a letter to the editor of the journal that published their paper and said “When we add these new years to the previous results, the statistical significance assigned to the now 22-year North Atlantic winter jet stream increase within the Global Aircraft Data Set (GADS) boxes disappears.” Maybe with three more years of data the trend will return. Or maybe it will go down, we don’t know. What we do know is there are some honest folks out there willing to let the data do the talking and we salute Tenenbaum and Williams for it. And they’re not alone.

The state of scientific debate on climate is discouraging, to be sure. But as Adam Smith once said, there’s a lot of ruin in a nation, and the foundations of honesty and professionalism run deep in the free societies. So we expect more of this kind of commendable conduct going forward.

Indeed, we have another one to tell you about now. And all the more encouraging because it’s from AFP, not just a specialized journal. Actually two.

National Geographic recently admitted the Little Ice Age was both real and mysterious, while engaging in a rearguard “It left ripples through history – and some lessons for today’s climate crisis.” At some point people just can’t take the stifling orthodoxy any more.

Thus just in time for the usual suspects (for instance Reuters “Sustainable Switch”, via email) to start hyping wildfires and climate, AFP says:

“Neither human-induced climate change nor the El Niño weather phenomenon were determining factors in the devastating forest fires that killed more than 130 people in Chile this month, according to the results of an international study revealed Thursday. Improper land use had a bigger impact, it found, with the expansion in recent decades of pine and eucalyptus monocultures -- much more flammable than native vegetation -- and the growth of informal settlements in forest zones.”

OK, so then they said even if it wasn’t, it was:

“This did not mean the threat of global warming should not be taken seriously, the researchers said. ‘Unless the world rapidly stops burning fossil fuels, fire danger... will increase,’ said a WWA statement summarizing the findings. ‘The risk of an increase in dangerous fire weather conditions attributable to human-induced climate change needs to be taken very seriously.’”

But so do the facts, and the facts say thus far it’s not happening. And so do the experts, grudgingly. Though far less often if they’re working for the government. Quelle surprise.