Is the Pope Catholic?  What would people say if he were to come out and admit he might be wrong about the divinity of Christ? 

That is essentially what has occurred in the Church of the Green Goddess; James Lovelock, father of the Gaia hypothesis, Defender of the Environmentalist Faith, most radical of Global Warming alarmists, has recanted!

Well, he has retreated, at any rate. Much like the legend of Galileo he has mumbled under his breath "and yet it still moves" (an unproven comment attributed to Galileo at his heresy trial.) Lovelock has stated that, while he was "alarmist" still there is Global Warming, but we just can't seem to find it. We've checked all the usual places; in the oceans, in the troposphere, in the ice caps, in the dryer, under the couch, under the pile of junk mail, and the missing heat just isn't to be found.  That tricky Gaia!  She likes to play with us so!In an interview with MSNBC Lovelock made such statements as:

"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books - mine included - because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened,"

"The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," 

"The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time... it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that...."

Lovelock was wise to walk this back; too much of the evidence simply fails to justify the catastrophic vision of Global Warming theory.

There is the matter of the missing heat which alarmists theorize is hiding at the bottom of the oceans. But they have no mechanism for this heat moving downward, something heat does not normally do, and cannot find it through deep-sea probes. While Arctic ice has been weak, it has reached a new high for recent years. Himalayan glaciers have stubbornly failed to melt and some have even grown. Worldwide precipitation has stubbornly failed to increase in a statistically meaningful way . There is no solid evidence that sea level rise has accelerated in recent years . Oh, and it hasn't warmed since Bill Clinton's first term in office.

The next few years should be fun, as Alarmist scientists, desperate to disassociate themselves from this failed theory, run for the tall grass. The Alpha Male of the pack has just retreated.

Timothy Birdnow is a St. Louis based writer. He blogs at www.tbirdnow.mee.nu