No global warming for 17 years, 6 months

Let’s recap:
The major effect of CO2 occurs in the first 20 ppmv of the atmosphere. That is a measurable, testable fact.
As any fool can see, at current concentrations the effect of CO2 is so minuscule that it cannot be measured. It’s effect is simply too small to measure with current technology.
Next, the only correlation anyone has been able to measure shows that changes in CO2 are caused by changes in temperature. But Whittemore ignores cause and effect. He presumes that since changes in CO2 and temperature happen, that T is the cause. But as shown, that is simply not the case.
Effect cannot precede cause, no matter how much people like Whittimore Believe. There is simply no corresponding evidence showing that ∆CO2 is the cause of ∆T. That is a scientifically baseless belief. Thus, the only possible evidence-based conclusion is that temperature drives CO2; not vice-versa. Of course, that destroys the alarmists’ True Belief that “carbon” drives the global climate. There is absolutely zero measurable, testable evidence that it does.
If CO2 was the climate driver claimed by the Carbon Religionists, then this would not be happening. Instead, we would be observing a steadily rising global temperature. But Planet Earth does not agree with the wild-eyed catastrophists. Just the opposite: we have been in an extremely benign global climate for the past century and a half. Contrast the past century and a half with the wild temperature swings during the Holocene. Those T changes happened when CO2 was very low.
So the True Believers will continue to believe, because Belief is an emotion. It is not reason. And that emotion is why the crazies ignore the Scientific Method, the Null Hypothesis, and a multitude of real world observations that debunk their catastrophic AGW belief. They just cannot help themselves. Emotions control them; they are impervious to reason.

Henry P,
You are correct. CO2 is an airborne fertilizer, directly responsible for the measurable greening of the planet. The increase in CO2 has been entirely beneficial; there is no downside. With one-third of the planet’s population subsisting on $2 a day or less, the rise in CO2 has literally made the difference between surviving and starvation for millions of people.
But some deluded true believers would, if they could, put a stop to CO2-induced prosperity. They would literally prefer to see people starve to death in order to be right, than to admit that they were competely wrong about the “carbon” scare. It is hard to imagine anyone more despicable than a climate alarmist who campaigns against that beneficial, life-giving trace gas.
As we here at the internet’s “Best Science & Technology” site know, all the hand-waving has been over a rise in CO2 from about three parts in 10,000, to only 4 parts in 10,000. That rise has caused no measurable global warming. But even if it did, any such warming would be an added benefit to the biosphere. There is no downside to adding a little more CO2 to the atmosphere. None at all.
But Michael Whittemore says:
When science looks at how hot the sun was and how much CO2 was in the atmosphere over the last 500 million years, it is only possible for the earth to be as hot as it was when you consider both the sun and CO2.
“…only possible”?? That is complete nonsense. Dr. Lief Svalgaard is the resident Solar physicist and professor here, and he disputes the SkS nonsense about the Sun having that kind of an effect. So who should we believe? A nobody named M Whittemore, who argues by cutting and pasting pseudo-science written by a cartoonist? Or Lief — a published, peer reviewed solar physicist?
My money is on the credible scientist, not on the cartoonist and his acolyte.
Another credible scientist is Prof Richard Lindzen, the author of twenty dozen peer reviewed climate papers, and the head of M.I.T.’s Atmospheric Sciences department [but admittedly, he is not a cartoonist]. Dr. Lindzen writes that as measured at the equator, the planet’s temperature has remained constant, within ±1ºC for the past billion+ years. So much for “snowball earth” being controlled by CO2 and the Sun. There are certainly temperature fluctuations, but they have nothing measurable to do with CO2, or vice-versa. I have repeatedly posted charts, from time scales of years to hundreds of millennia, showing that CO2 follows temperature — not vice-versa. [I will re-post those charts on request]
Next, Whittemore opines: “…the scientific predictions for antagonistic global warming from man made CO2 being observed…”
More nonsense. Nothing like that is being “observed”. The fact is that not one prediction from the runaway global warming crowd has come to pass. Their central prediction — that the rise in [harmless, beneficial] CO2 will cause runaway global warming — has been so thoroughly debunked, discredited and ridiculed, that the alarmist crowd has stopped calling their failed prediction “runaway global warming”. Now, they use the vague term “climate change”. That change alone shows that they were wrong. They are just moving the goal posts, as always.
The climate alarmists’ central ‘catastrophic AGW’ prediction was based on always-wrong computer climate models. Not one GCM was able to predict the seventeen year HALT to global warming. Not one of them! Every model got that wrong. CO2 has continued to rise, even though the planet stopped warming many years ago. But because the climate alarmist crowd’s belief is based on emotion, not on rational thought, they are incapable of accepting that the Real World has falsified their beliefs.
Finally, Whittemore ends up parroting Trenberth’s ‘hidden heat in the deep ocean’ nonsense, as if heat doesn’t rise. They believe that somehow, heat has been lurking at the bottom of the cold ocean, just waiting to pounce. As if.
If it weren’t for constantly moving the goal posts, and “adjusting” the temperature record to always show scary warming, and engaging in psychological projection, and being afflicted with cognitive dissonance, and believing the ravings of a lunatic cartoonist, the alarmist crowd wouldn’t have very much to say. Not much at all.
When it comes to the Scientific Method, the Null Hypothesis, empirical observations, and simple common sense, those are the only times that the alarmist crowd goes silent. No wonder they have lost every public debate, and now they will not debate any more. Because they have no credible science, only their emotional True Belief.