Anthropogenic Warming "Pause" Due to Ocean Currents? No, it's Intelligent Planetary Thermodynamics.

Greetings, mortals!  Today I'd like to discuss the so-called global warming "hiatus," and the recent claim by scientists that they've found what they believe to be its cause.

What is the claimed discovery?

Earlier today, researchers led by Drs. Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung published in Science the results of a study showing that currents in the Atlantic and Southern Oceans have been operating as heat sinks, carrying heat down from the ocean surface to its depths.  According to their research, currents carry warm water from the tropics -- which is relatively saltier than ocean water closer to the poles -- to the North Atlantic, where it cools.  Then, because saltier water is denser, it sinks to the ocean depths, taking with it heat from the surface.  This process is known as saltwater subduction.

The researchers further announced that based on their analysis of available data, these currents are cyclical.  The warmer water coming from the tropics melts ice at the poles (which has been happening rapidly over the last decade).  That makes the water closer to the poles less saline, and therefore less dense.  That slows the ocean current.  As a result, the scientists claim, the current switches back to a warming cycle until the salinity differentials switch back.  This happens once every 30 years or so.

The last time these currents were on a cooling cycle, in the 1970s, the cooling trend was so pronounced it triggered fears of a new Ice Age.  The switch to the warming cycle corresponded with the rapid global warming observed between the mid-70s and early 2000s.  Researchers attribute half of that warming to these ocean cycles, and half to human activity.  The current switched back to a cooling cycle in or about 2000 -- the start of the global warming "pause."

But global temperatures did not drop.  Rather, they rose more slowly and intermittently. 

What does this mean for me?

If the researchers are right about the effect of these ocean currents, this suggests human activities over the last 15 years have contributed so significantly to average global temperature rise that they counteracted a cooling effect that, when last observed, was so significant people feared an Ice Age.  That, in turn, suggests that when the current switches back to a warming cycle in approximately 15 years, we will see unprecedented warming of the Earth's average global temperature due to human greenhouse gas emissions, to possibly catastrophic effect:

"The frightening part," Tung says, is "it's going to warm just as fast as the last three decades of the 20th century, which was the fastest warming we've seen." Only now, we'll be starting from a higher average surface temperature than before.

Is it time to finally get serious on a global level about changing human behavior to avoid and counteract further anthropogenic warming?

No, of course not.  There's no such thing as anthropogenic warming.  These ocean currents aren't responsible for any changes in global temperatures at all.  The evidence the scientists presented is simply not valid.  They didn't find it in the Bible, so it's just not true.

What's really causing these fluctuations in global temperatures?  God's Will.  He changes the average global temperatures, thus causing fluctuations in climates, to further his inscrutable -- but perfect -- Design.  I call it "Intelligent Planetary Thermodynamics."  That's a lot of syllables, though, so I'm open to suggestions on a better name.

The bottom line is, human activity doesn't cause warming, despite the overwhelming evidence for exactly that.  God does.  And you can rest assured that despite His history of allowing, condoning, and/or commanding slavery, torture, murder, infanticide, and genocide, AND triggering a global Flood, that He is causing all of these changes because He has humanity's best interests at heart.

So, in summary, you can, despite the mountain of evidence suggesting otherwise, go on burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases.  There will be no adverse consequences.  Everything will be just fine.