The unspoken truth in the supposedly ‘settled’ world of climate science is that after decades of research costing billions of dollars we are no nearer knowing how much global temperatures will rise in response to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. In fact, notes Dr. Roy Spencer, the latest crop of climate models, known as CMIP6, now disagree on the expected amount of warming in the lower atmosphere “more than ever before”.
Estimates currently vary between 1.8°C to 5.6°C among researchers who run computer models and mostly believe the rises are caused by humans burning fossil fuel. But as Daily Sceptic readers have seen, this hypothesis is not the only game in town. It is known that greenhouse gases such as CO2 only trap heat within narrow bands of the infrared spectrum. Some scientists suggest the gases become ‘saturated’ and their warming effect falls sharply as concentrations rise, declining after a certain point on a logarithmic scale. To understand this in simple terms, it can be noted that doubling loft insulation in a house will not trap twice as much heat, since most of it has already been enclosed.
Dr. Spencer, who is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), argues that the wide margin of temperature prediction occurs because the role of clouds and water vapour (the most abundant greenhouse gas) are “insufficiently understood”. The former NASA scientist and compiler of the accurate UAH global temperature record feels the models are not yet up to the task since they now disagree with each other “by a factor of three or more”.
Huntsville, we have a problem. Global elites are forcing their populations to undergo radical economic and societal transformations through the imposition of a collectivist Net Zero project by promoting a ‘settled’ science narrative that says humans control the climate. Climate Armageddon tales are spun from UN platforms through to mainstream media headlines stating the temperature will soar unless fossil fuel, currently supplying 80% of our energy needs, is removed within less than 30 years. But it all rests on an unproven hypothesis that cannot count a single peer-reviewed paper that provides conclusive proof that humans cause all or most climate change. The advantage of the rival saturation hypothesis is that it fits past observations of climate, given that CO2 levels have been up to 20 times higher without any sign of runaway global heating. After 50 years of work, scientists are no nearer agreeing on the crucial issue at the heart of the climate debate. How much will the temperature rise if more CO2 enters the atmosphere? The ‘science’ is settled only within the ranks of the politically committed.
The gulf in understanding about the projected temperature rise is shown in the graph below. Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is the estimated rise in temperature if C02 doubles in the atmosphere. It is widely quoted. Transient Climate Response (TCR) is a measure estimating warming when CO2 rises at 1% a year.
It can be seen that the modelled ECS range (orange bar) of 1.8C to 5.6C in the latest CMIP6 is the largest of any generation of models dating back to the1990s. The graph was produced in a 2020 paper analysing ECS and TCR led by the IPCC author Gerald Meehl. Like Spencer, the authors found that cloud feedbacks were the “most likely” contributors to the high values and increased range of ECS in the latest models. It is noted that early “simple” models from the 1970s produced warming between 1.5C-4-5C. This simplistic view of the response of earth climate systems was viewed at the time as “informing the magnitude” of the relative climate change the Earth could experience in the future.
And does to this day, after decades of growing green hysteria and scientific work that has actually widened this corridor of great uncertainty.
In fact the Meehl paper gives an idea of how little scientists still understand about the chaotic and non-linear atmosphere. Certain processes connected to ocean heat uptake would be better quantified by “improved temperature observations through the full depth of the global ocean, as well as increased understanding of various feedbacks in the climate system”, it is noted. Making progress will also require “enhanced observations” that could provide “new insight into cloud microphysics”.
The Meehl paper accepts that the situation has “elicited scrutiny” because there are implications for “policy-relevant mitigation strategies”. But any scrutiny of climate models is lacking in the wider political and media debate. As with Covid, the results of models are accepted almost without question in the rush to Net Zero, despite, for instance, 40 years of wrong temperature forecasts. In addition, scientists model climate impacts using improbable pathways assuming warming of up to 5C in less than 80 years. As the recent Clintel report showed, almost half of the climate impacts forecast by the IPCC and the wider scientific community are based on this highly improbable data. Meanwhile, so called eco anxiety rises as mainstream media acts as an uncritical trusted messenger for all the doom-laden predictions.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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$cientism. No data, no common sense supports the cult of Klimat. Money and power is all they have.
I was reading a history of the middle to late Bronze age and going over Isaiah the 8th century prophet astronomer. You want climate change? Go back to 1500 BC and 750 BC. Land turned upside down. Empires, states destroyed. Volcanoes, ash, lava en masse. Endless earthquakes. Global catastrophes. Massive floods. Rifts in the ocean appear – one stretches 2 x around the globe. Sun blotted out. Rotation and tilt changed. Number of days increased. Dead everywhere. Global. Every culture has the same story. The civilised became nomadic. Massive swings in temps including in 1500 BC an ice age in the north. Unending precipitation. But what do we know about it today? Nothing.
The cult vomits the Billions of years with not much happening. Oh but today the rounding error 0.04% plant food, and our 5% of it, from the non-existent fossil fuel (hydrogen-carbon liquid has nothing to do with a f*ing fossil) is the end of the world. Horseshit all of it. We are clueless. People can’t even tell me how coal seams form. Or why gold is littered only at the surface.
This theory has been around long enough for the earlier predictions to have been tested against actual climate data and the models refined so that their output matches the observations. This is how I was taught that scientific knowledge (as opposed to speculation) progresses.
All I see is continuing divergence between prediction and reality, and a lot of very nasty shouting at people who point out this inconvenient fact, followed swiftly by changes to the historical record.
Saturation: is this the fellah?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf
No one wants to silence other people on issues such as black holes or evolution and all other matters of science. It is only politicised issues where you get claims of “settled science” or “all scientists agree” etc. because no one is trying to reorganise the global economy and gain control over the worlds wealth and resources based on what might or might not be true regarding black holes or evolution. But more and more government are playing a bigger and bigger role in shaping the outcome of scientific research and inquiry on hugely politicised issues like climate, where the symbiotic relationship that has always existed between governments and scientists is clearer than ever before. Climate change “science” is almost entirely funded by government, and I often hear that “deniers” of climate change simply want to protect the agenda of fossil fuel company’s. But hold it right there.——What makes those people think that governments don’t have an agenda? Ofcourse they do. It is UN agenda of Sustainable Development. If there is no evidence that dangerous changes are happening or will happen because of our CO2 emissions then that whole political agenda collapses. ——That cannot be allowed to happen. The urge to micro manage very aspect of people’s lives depends on the “science”. But there is a very big difference between “science” and “official science”. One is the genuine search for truth and the other is the excuse for public policy.
Not quite true, sadly, though you’re right that a large factor is politicisation, but sometimes that is from the scientific community itself, and not just from governments.
Scientists and other academics have been cancelled or even sacked, on many occasions, for raising doubts about the adequacy of Neodarwinian mutation/natural selection as the sole engine of evolution. And it began way back when the Modern Synthesis guys took over the professorships and journals back in the 1920s and 1930s and started elbowing out the formerly dominant Structuralists, Orthogenesists and Saltationists. It worked so well that most people now don’t even realise that Darwinism was in deep scientific trouble from the end of the nineteenth century until the 1920s.
Now, Schools, universities, media people and governments all have a lot of money and jobs invested in keeping the paradigm’s wheels on. Hence all dissenters, even atheists, will find themselves labelled as “anti-science Creationists” in exactly the same way as others are “Far-right Transphobes or “Anti-vaxxers.”
But that’s not a unique case – for years it was hard to make your way in cosmology if you disputed string-theory, and even now the community wants an even bigger multi-billion dollar collider rather than admit that the theory is junk. And remember how governments want to look “sciency” by investing in multi-national projects like the Big Collider.
Likewise, the linear-non-threshold model of damage from radiation, PM2.5 and a host of other politically-hot potatoes arose from Herman Muller’s use of his academic and political clout to make it a scientific axiom and suppress evidence that contradicted it. Once more, there is much vested interest in regulating all these “toxins,” not to mention talking up the Armageddon view of nuclear war to maximise public paranoia and so control geopolitics.
My main point is that science’s self-promoting myth of objectivity and self-correction, which hides an all-too-human reality, makes it extremely vulnerable to being corrupted by government money, and used to awe the public into compliance with largely political projects like climate-change, COVID, and the rest of it.
Sensible reply, and I take your point about politicised aspects of other bits of science going on, but Climate Change has to be the Mother of all Politicised scientific issues, which in reality isn’t only about science. It is also an economic, moral and social issue.
Changing you mind
the old Spanish Proverb says;
”A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will”
Of course, in our world changing your mind on things, be they mRNA vaccines or climate change; challenges so much power, money and vested interests that it is not an easy thing to do. To challenge climate change thinking is akin to challenging Christianity in the time of the Spanish Inquisition and will be met with something of a similar reaction. And so my thanks to Chris and those like him who persist in pointing out that the climate change Emperor is actually naked.
Everything pointing towards negative efficacy of the jib jabs and more hospitalizations if you’ve had one or more. Obviously not safe but they’re certainly ”effective” at something.
https://twitter.com/_aussie17/status/1666657074607198208
Computer models are garbage. There is no empirical evidence of man-made global warming, all such predictions are based on computer models.
Note that TCR range is much narrower than ECS and narrowed significantly from CMIP 1 to CMIP 5 (although it broadened a little with CMIP 6). ECS is a strange concept anyway. There is never going to be a stable equilibrium with double CO2.
In the end this is like saying the science behind smoking and cancer drug is not settled because there are such a wide range of predictions as to how long a smoker will go without getting cancer.
And in today’s other news….
If Climate Science is about being able to accurately predict future global temperatures then this science is not settled. The wide range of predictions from the various models evidences this fact.
Yep but we can see what smoking does to lungs. Your analogy is a poor one. PS There have been times with 20 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere with no runaway global warming taking place and current levels are historically very low. If you know the correct amount of CO2 that should be in your ideal planet please let us know.
Why are governments basing their policy on climate prediction models, which have not once given accurate results? I think climate modellers aiming for accuracy are no better than medieval wizards trying to find ways of turning base metal into gold. Proper scientists know that humankind cannot know or evaluate all the factors that control our climate. They also know CO2, the gas essential for life, and currently consisting of 0.042% of our atmosphere, cannot be a main influence controlling our climate. Only scientists financed by organisations benefitting from net-zero, politicians making loads of money or gaining power by talking rubbish about it, or idiots believe this rubbish. I hope soon many more idiots start to realise their stupidity, and we stop our politicians from aiming to cripple every aspect of our life which is the effective objective of net-zero.