Unsettled Science

We are told by government-funded climate alarmists that their forecasts of dangerous man-made global warming rely on “settled science”. Their “settled science” represents a mare’s nest of computer models, resting on a few match-sticks of science, surrounded by tall forests of uncertainty.

It is indeed settled science that all gases in the atmosphere can affect the exchange of heat between the sun, the Earth and outer space, and this can affect global temperatures. It is also agreed that certain gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide can absorb and redirect radiant energy passing through the atmosphere.

It is also settled science (but seldom mentioned) that the warming potential of each additional unit of carbon dioxide is progressively less, and is trivial at and above current levels. It is also agreed that water vapour has a far greater “greenhouse effect”, because it is fifty times more abundant, and it affects more radiation wavelengths.

However, it is not settled science that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main controller of global temperatures. Nor is it proven or agreed that man’s production of carbon dioxide is harmful to life on Earth, or that it will cause catastrophic global warming.

The official climate models are based on a theory that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere drives surface temperature changes. However, not one of the dozens of computerised climate models relied on by the IPCC predicted flat-lining temperatures over the last 17 years. This indicates that their carbon-centric assumption is wrong. At last count, there were 53 different explanations for these failures. This is hardly “settled science”.

The models ignore important climate controllers such as solar cycles, ocean oscillations, clouds, vegetation cover and volcanoes. These all have significant effects on surface temperature.

The models also err in assuming most feedbacks are strongly positive, thus multiplying the initial small effect. This again is NOT settled science. If surface temperature rises, evaporation from the vast oceans will transfer heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere, where much of the heat is radiated to space and where the shading from the additional clouds tends to offset and stabilise the initial surface heating. Carbon dioxide has naturally exceeded today’s levels in the past but this did not cause runaway global warming.

There is no consensus. Climate science is NOT settled.

Official climate models have failed to reflect all the interconnected variables of the solar system, the restless atmosphere, the changing biosphere and the vast oscillating oceans. Pickering Post