The Unsettled Science of Global Warming Revealed by the Climate Models

The last 15 or so years of stasis in the global temperatures, is making it very obvious that the settled science we are told is so well-known and so well-executed in the climate models is full of holes.  Yet, Obama and many others claim that 97% of scientists are blind to these obvious problems.  Well no, 97% of scientists are not that blind and that claim of settled science and a consensus on it is hogwash.

Dr. Roy Spencer recently discussed a plot of the early fits and later predictions of 44 climate models for the lower troposphere temperatures for comparison with the University of Alabama Huntsville and the RSS satellite observations.  The plot was provided by John Christy based on data from the KNMI Climate Explorer.  Dr. Spencer's post was entitled Global Warming Slowdown: The View from Space.

The plot of the 44 climate model results for the temperature in the lower troposphere with comparison to the UAH and RSS satellite observations:

The heavy black line is the average of the 44 climate models.  The UAH satellite measurements are in blue and the RSS measurements are in red.  Both the UAH and RSS satellite measurements are now at lower temperatures than any of the 44 climate models predicted.  To be sure, a few models might say that they are still within their expected errors.  However, it is an obvious conclusion that the settled science of climate represented both by the average and by the wide dispersion of the results, is a myth cultivated by a tireless propaganda machine.

It is likely that most of the developers of these models believe in catastrophic man-made global warming due to man's emissions of carbon dioxide from his use of fossil fuels.  That belief is pretty much a requirement to get funding from governments around the world to develop these models.  This must certainly result in a significant bias of the average result of these models.

The UAH lower troposphere measurement has risen compared to the zero baseline temperature only 33% of the rise predicted by the model average.  The RSS lower troposphere measurement has risen only 28% as high as the model average.  Saying that climate science is settled in this case is like saying that the average of 44 models for the gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth is 32.1 m/s^2, but those doggone measurements keep coming up 9.8 m/s^2.  Despite that difference, there is a consensus among scientists that the science of gravity is well-understood and settled science!  It is not important whether the gravitational acceleration is 32.1 or 9.8 m/s^2 when we measure out gold for sale!

The settled science is also so well-known that the predicted temperature change in the lower troposphere for 2025 for the highest prediction based on the well-known and settled science is 2.63 times the lowest predicted change.  Even a non-scientist should be able to easily see that this implies a great disagreement in the science between these model-builders.  It implies a large uncertainty about the science the respective models believe they know well enough to try to incorporate into their models.

In fact, there are many uncertainties that are actually known and many others that may well be unknown.  Predicting the future solar insolation is not all that well known.  The effects of aerosols and of blown dust are not well-known.  The factors that change the degree cloud cover and type of clouds over time are not well-known.  These models have a bias toward assuming that radiation transport of energy in the lower troposphere is greater than it actually is.  They underestimate the energy transport effects of water evaporation and of air convection.  They do not understand the cycles in the oceans sufficiently well.  Thermal inputs from ocean vents and volcanoes and from solar wind and electromagnetic field effects are not well-known.  The large numbers of bacteria in the atmosphere came as a recent surprise.  How do they affect solar insolation and longwave IR scattering?  The non-human sources of CO2 are still not well-understood and this affects predictions of natural CO2 emissions over time.  For that matter, the amount of man's CO2 emissions over time and the time that CO2 remains in the atmosphere is not well-known in these climate models either.

So how do these government-funded and coddled global warming alarmist scientists, most of the print media, and the Obama administration get away with claiming that the science of catastrophic man-made global warming is settled?  How can they believe and expect anyone else to believe that 97% of scientists are on-board with this hogwash?

They ought to be laughed at were the consequences not so dire.  But, they advocate so many limits on our freedoms and so much economic damage in the name of this scientifically bogus theory that it is hardly a laughing matter.  What is more, it is very harmful to the respect that real science should be given.

Something to Celebrate in 2009: Global Warming Thesis Falls to Its Knees

While the first year of the presidency of B.O. will be loaded with attempts to bribe U.S. industries into new dependency upon the government trough and a take-over of large chunks of the medical insurance industry and of medical health services, there is an important bit of good news. The claim that the world will soon suffer catastrophic harm due to man-made global warming is likely to continue to lose credibility.

There has been no warming since 1998, when a strong Gulf Stream current and the El Nino cyclical warming in the Pacific caused a very warm year. The cycles of the ocean currents are complex and are not part of the UN IPPC oft-cited global temperature prediction programs. These programs do not provide for the variation of the sun's radiation which correlates with its sunspot activity. Indeed, 69% of the global warming of the last two decades of the 20th century may be due to an increase in radiation from the sun, which would provide a very reasonable explanation for the known temperature increase on several of the other planets of our solar system. We should also bear in mind that the heat capacity of the oceans is hugely greater than that of the atmosphere. Consequently, the current cycles of the oceans play a major role in the decades long cycles of warming and cooling. Variations in the Gulf Stream and the El Nino and El Nina cycles are very important. So to is the 70 to 80 year cycle of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which sometimes brings warm water into the northeast Atlantic.

Other natural factors are finally beginning to get some recognition. The role of cosmic radiation in providing nucleation sites for the formation of water droplets to create cloud cover has recently been recognized. We have long been without any supermajor volcanic explosions that have put sun-reflecting dust into the upper atmosphere, which allows for warmer climates. In 2007, it was also claimed in a paper in the Quarterly Journal of the HMS that increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to less water in the atmosphere and water is a more important greenhouse gas than CO2 is. Thus, it claims there is no positive feedback leading to increasing temperatures, as has often been claimed by the global warming alarmists.

Perhaps the most important decades long climate temperature cycle is the 22-year cycle in the solar radiation and magnetic field linkage. This produced the warming cycle from about 1975 to 1998 and the earlier warming cycle from 1925 to 1947. The longer term important cycle is the glacial and interglacial periods, with the present period likely still in a warming phase following the last glacial cool period.

The 2007 UN IPCC report claimed we would see a 0.3 degree Centigrade temperature increase in a decade due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. Well, there has been an increase of 15 ppm from 1998 to 2007 and there was no temperature increase at all. In fact, 2007 itself was a very cold year. Now in 2008, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 5% greater than it was in 1998, and still there is no warming. Various scientists have now claimed that there will be no warming until about 2015, due either to sunspot activity cycles or the cycles of ocean currents.

The global climate temperature models of the UN IPCC reports have never been able to predict the temperature into the future, or for that matter the temperature of periods long ago, but inferred from the ice records and by other means. These computer models are known to be completely inadequate for making predictions. What they are is a test of our state of knowledge of the climate and they show us that what we know is still very inadequate. I think they also show that the U.N. is also being selective in what part of our knowledge of the climate causing factors is included in the models. Selective can be good, but the U.N. is being driven by politics in its selection process, rather than by science.

Increasing numbers of scientists have publicly refuted the idea that it is established that CO2 emitted by man into the atmosphere has caused global warming and that any such warming would be catastrophically bad for man and the earth. More than 31,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition taking the stance that man-made global warming is not established to be the case by science. Of these scientists, more than 9,000 have Ph.D. degrees. Yours truly has recently sent in his signed statement to be added to the petition. Only 52 scientists had a hand in writing the UN IPCC Summary for Policy Makers.

The scientific case for anthropomorphic global warming is falling apart. It is to be hoped that this will impede the politicians from creating catastrophic cap-and-trade and anti-energy legislation. Many politicians are hoping to use the supposed catastrophe of man-made global warming to force people throughout the world to accept rule from international bodies such as the United Nations. Global energy usage restrictions and taxes are envisioned. We must be diligent in making it known that the science of the climate is not sufficiently known to justify this grab for power. In fact, what is known tends to enforce the idea that natural forces have much more effect upon the climate than do man's activities.