Climate Change: Where is the Science?
Is it twice as likely that the Earth is cooling than that it is warming? That humans and fossil fuels have nothing, or everything to do with it, or somewhere in between? Or is it over 99% certain that anthropogenic carbon burning-induced warming is sweeping us to the apocalypse, with all other possibilities combined being less than one percent probable?The only way to find out is through the most rigorous and critical application of the scientific method, from laboratory practice to public discourse. Anything less than that increases the risk that the 'solution' could be more catastrophic to humans than the results of climate change itself.Let us examine what the climate change alarm community has done and how they have done it, and see if it qualifies as the rigorous and unimpeachable science that its proponents claim it is. We'll walk it back from results to first principles.First, results. Nothing defines science so well in the popular mind than the predictive power of scientific theory. "If the conditions, materials and/or forces A, B, C, and D come together in such-and-such a way, then the outcome WILL BE 6.7294874X. If variables P, Q, and R are substituted for A, C, and D, then the outcome will be 2.1 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol in combustion." Awesome.So, how is that predictive power working out so far? And more to the point, what effect have those results had on the public's confidence in the supposedly infallible science and scientists? In 1999 they said that warming would wipe out the Great Barrier Reef. In 2000 they said that Britain would no longer see snow during winter. In 2001 they predicted starvation from failing grain crops in India. From 2003 to 2005 they concluded that the drought then occurring in Australia would be permanent and Sydney dwellers would have nothing to drink. In 2006 they predicted unprecedented severe cyclones and hurricanes. In 2008 they said that by 2013 there would be no more arctic ice cap; that we would be swimming with the otters at the North Pole.None of these predictions have come to pass. The Reef is still there, as is the arctic ice. Children make more snowmen than ever in Britain and the rains returned to Australia with a vengeance. Thanks to the instantaneous and ubiquitous communications made possible by our smartphones and social networking, there is much greater awareness of the severe weather events that do occur than there was before, but in absolute terms, such events are neither more frequent nor more severe than they have always been.The climate computer models have demonstrated themselves to have no reliable predictive power. The mother of all predictions, that global warming was inexorable, has been debunked by the past seventeen years of actual measurement, sending the climate change community into a mad scramble to explain it, deny it, 'correct' the earlier data, explain why it doesn't disprove their theories, or explain it away.Even so, none of this proves that global warming isn't happening or won't happen, or that excess carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning won't send us over the brink, right? Of course not -- how do you prove a negative? But the persistence of politicians with a vested interest insisting that Climate Change is a greater threat to humanity than ISIS, Iran, North Korea, unemployment, burning American cities and negative economic growth combined, in spite of the failures of any of the predictions to come true, suggests that something is wrong at a deeper level with the way we are practicing and discussing science.Scientists, strictly defined, should have no agenda whatsoever other than the discovery of truth; truth of which no human being is the ultimate arbiter, but only Nature. Albert Einstein famously did not want his theory of Relativity accepted until its predictive power had been proven. Scientists who have come to believe that a certain theory is closer to the truth than any known alternatives have the right, indeed the duty, to defend that theory against any and all challenges. But the true scientist must always, without exception, maintain intellectual honesty and be prepared to abandon a theory if its predictive power cannot explain empirical data that does not fit and/or when a rival theory that seems to do a better job of explaining the subject phenomena (often in simpler terms) arises. Skepticism and openness to change and to challenge is the fundamentalist creed of the true scientist.Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/climate_change_where_is_the_science.html#ixzz3clMDiXm7 Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
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Here is an article showing the "hiatus" in global warming is a myth: ...
And here's an article showing how the big oil companies knew their product was a major contributor to climate change back in the 80's but decided to take a page out of Big Tobacco's play book and deny how their product was having such an adverse impact, in their pursuit of profit.
Exxon knew of climate change in 1981 , email says but it funded deniers for 27 more years
Some climate campaigners have likened the industry to the conduct of the tobacco industry which for decades resisted the evidence that smoking causes cance
Solar irradiance has a large effect on the Earth because of Milankovic cycles. It's effect during the last millennia has been only a minor factor in the Earth's warming. The irradiance increased slightly until about 1960 and has been declining since. Surely the current warming trend is not from the sun. A discussion of this is in the article:
It's amazing how supposedly objective data can constantly be reinterpreted until the desired result is found. Just keep changing the past until it looks "right."
Can we "reinterpret" the satellite readings as well? Funny how they used to be the gold standard for measuring global temperatures, until of course, the numbers didn't show what they were supposed to.
There is no evidence that the Earth is cooling, and both the theory and any reasonable extrapolation of the empirical evidence shows that the Earth will only get warmer in the future. Here's an article which contains much of the scientific evidence:
There are about and hundred articles on the same website which explains the science of global warming, why the skeptics claims are wrong, and why the scientists are right. If you want to know where the science is, you might try reading a few of those, starting with the earlier ones which explain the basic theories.
which proves what ?
You use words but they are political words not scientific ones : 1] "reasonable" (according to you ?)
"extrapolation of the empirical evidence" (Extrapolation is a dangerous statistical method & should only be utilized when you know almost all of the factors )
So ... doing science by consensus is now the gold standard ? Consensus is NOT science . It's just a popularity contest . Here is an example of actual climate science :
Zharkova did not compare the magnitudes.
Aw! You are just bedeviling us since you want it HOT.
Thanks for the link . I'll be happy to discuss its implications at length if you post that comment in my article :
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rather than in this old back dated article .
Do not feed the blockhead ...
Zharkova'sprediction that the solar energy will decline is not incorrect. The implications that it will cause another Ice Age is certainly incorrect, as shown by the article and the references in the article.
The effect of the decreasing energy from the sun was already well-known to climate scientists, and the magnitude of the decline over the next few decades has been shown to be be very small in comparison to the warming caused by greenhouse gas increases. According to the Milankovic cycles, the Earth should be slowly cooling for the next 20,000 years, but it is not - because of the greenhouse effect.
Zharkova'sscientific paperdid not predict a mini Ice Age, but just a decline in the solar radiation.A nuclear war could cause a nuclear winter, or a cataclysmic volcanic eruption could send us into another Ice Age, but those things are certainly not predictable.