Computer climate models are constructed based on scientists’ best estimate of how the climate functions. Inputs are identified and weighted, interactions among them are delineated in the code and outputs are iteratively fed back into the next run of the model. Graphs of these annual outputs can be built and displayed. The results of the runs are then compared against the actual observation in the real world to see if the models are correct. If they are correct the models are said to be validated and we can have some confidence that their projections into the future can be accepted. If Mother Nature does not corroborate the test runs of the models then they are said to be invalidated. When that happens and we hate it when that happens science says: modify or abandon the theory upon which the models are based. More inputs can be identified and included. The weightings given to each variable can be adjusted and the runs repeated. However, until the output agrees Mother Nature the theory behind the models cannot be considered to be accurate. No one knows the future and until we have validated climate models we cannot claim to know what that future will be like.We have no time travellers who can go there and report back.
Modern climate models give a starring role to CO2 as a main driver of climate change. Is this headline billing justified or should CO2 be relegated to a bit part in the climate drama? It is important to know the answer to this question because political and economic policies based on a false theory will lead to expenditures on solutions that waste precious resources.
So what has been happening in the world of climate models? Do the experts who construct and run them yet know what they are talking about? Do they closely track reality?.
A recent study of 73 different climate models (there are 73 because different models use different inputs and weight them differently. This is what is meant by ‘settled science’) that plotted the expected behaviour of the Earth’s temperature with the actual measurements of temperature discovered that all of them exaggerate the warming that has actually occurred. They all expected and projected a warmer world than we have experienced to date. CO2 based models are thus invalidated as accurate crystal balls. Under the assumption that CO2 is the thermostat controlling the planet’s temperature the models failed to anticipate the slower temperature rise which has morphed into a plateau and more recently a decline. Anyone can extend a trend. We all learned how to do that by secondary school. The real genius is the one who can predict a bend in the trend. Our CO2 based climate models have failed to do that.
But CO2 based models are not the only hypothetical models in existence.There are climate models that give more weight to solar influences that track the planet’s temperature more closely than those that cast CO2 in the lead role. There is now a competition in the scientific marketplace for making sense out of the chaotic system that constitutes our planet’s climate. And the solar theories are in contradistinction to the CO2 based models and forecast not a warming world but a cooling one. They suggest that we prepare for cold not warmth.
Will we become human fricassee or a frozen dinner?
Do humans drive the climate or does the sun control our destination? Or could it be the computer that runs the models? Humorously, the climate models give different results depending on what type of computer they are executed. The models seem fraught wih inaccuracies of all sorts.
Mother Nature seems to have rendered her decision and she is a CAGW denier. Can we jokingly conclude that CO2 has caused warming to stabilize?
The CO2 based climate models imply that the polar regions should warm more quickly than elsewhere and that extreme weather should become more frequent and severe as CO2 continues to accumulate unabated into the atmosphere. Neither of these trends has been found in reality. In fact, with some forms of extreme weather the trend is actually down as evidenced by the lack of landfalling major hurricanes in the Us over the last 7+ years. The folks at ClimateDepot.com have put together a special report on extreme weather that examines the peer reviewed literature and details the unforeseen lack of an incase in severe weather around the world.
The CO2 based models project a ‘hot spot’ in the tropical troposphere about 8-10 km in altitude that has also failed to materialize.
Climate sensitivity is the magnitude of the response of the average global temperature to a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. This assumes, of course, that CO2 has a positive effect on temperature. The IPCC climate models have reported a climate sensitivity of between 2 and 6C. The IPCC AR reports document a climate sensitivity that keeps declining as time goes on. The settled science of climate sensitivity is settling down to a less scary scenario as cli sci matures.
A couple of studies that have come out after the cut-off date for submissions to the fifth IPCC advance report on the climate have arrived at values for climate sensitivity of half a degree and zero degrees. As the ‘settled science’ has progressed climate sensitivity to CO2 is slowly being relegated from that of the star to the role of a bit player in the drama or perhaps CO2 is not even in the play at all. But if these two papers don’t make it into the impending AR5 report we will have to wait another 5 to 7 years for the update that is known now. Government policy formulated on research that is not up to date can be dangerous and expensive endeavour.
Contrary to a major assumption of CO2 based climate models the sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2 in our atmosphere has been grossly exaggerated and is nothing to worry about.
Mother Nature seems to have rendered her decision and she is a CAGW denier. Can we jokingly conclude that CO2 has caused the improvement in severe weather even as CO2 concentration has continued to grow unabated.
With climate models unable to make predictions that stick and a lack of ability to simulate the known climate of the past the search is on for factors that may have been missed in the formerly ‘settled science’ of climate change.
Weather watchers among the populace seem to have caught on that something is wrong with the consensus on climate change. They are noting the Mother Nature is in disagreement.
Warmist scientists who don’t like the way skeptics refer to evidence that doesn’t support the consensus narrative have taken to mockingly burning that evidence.
Can the complete collapse of CAGW be far behind?
German journalists have clued in to the fact the climate scientists have veered off the search for evidence in defense of an indefensible position and realize that climate scientists have embarrassed their discipline. The unexpected temperature plateau has become so obvious that even the NYT has acknowledged it as well as The Economist.
In a bid to save the CAGW agenda alarmists are associating every negative happening they can find or conjure up in their heads as a result of global warming. It would be quite humorous were it not for the seriousness that this issue be resolved in accordance with what is going on in the real world. The reputation of science is at stake. These are desperate times indeed for alarmists in search of converts.
If the proponents of a solar centered theory of climate change are correct we should be preparing for a colder world not a warmer one. The reduction of solar activity during solar cycle 24 is expected to continue with an anticipated even quieter solar cycle 25. Cold consequences are far more devastating to humans than would be those from a naturally warming world.
CO2 has been mislabeled a pollutant. Pollutants usually cause harm. But CO2 is an invisible trace gas that is essential to life on this planet. Perhaps it is this knowledge possessed by the public that has prompted the change is discussing carbon dioxide(CO2) as a pollutant and instead its demonizers now refer to it as carbon. In marketing their anti-CO2 policy they realized that demonising plant food would be a hard sell.
CO2, an invisible trace gas essential to life on Earth, is plant food. We exhale CO2 and help to feed the flora. In return they slip us oxygen of which we are rather fond in a mutually beneficial and amicable symbiotic relationship.
Bonus: plants grow better, stronger, faster because of the increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
CO2 is green. We need more of it not less. CO2 has been exhaled during the creation of this post. No living thing was harmed. Some even liked it. Let the plants dance.
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