This one should be fun. Today I want to talk about anthropogenic global warming. You see, youre both wrong. The other day I posted a very long note about evolution and creationism. At the beginning of that note, I wrote about what science is, and what it is not. It is useful to start from that same jumping off point now. Science is a method of prediction. You observe phenomena, you make a hypothesis about the phenomena, you design experiments or observations that can disprove your hypothesis, and then you test your hypothesis with these experiments or observations. You try to disprove your own hypothesis, and other scientists also try to disprove it. You use the hypothesis to predict future outcomes. The value of science lies in its ability to predict outcomes. Some notes about science. First, science is a methodology. The definition of science is a method, not a set of facts or conclusions. Second, nothing in science is ever final, because no hypothesis can ever be proved to be correct, it can just be not disproved, perhaps for a very long time. That is, all the attempts to disprove the hypothesis so far have failed. The longer this goes on, the more accepted the hypothesis becomes. In many cases, use of the hypothesis can be used to predict something else, something new, perhaps something unusual. When that prediction is correct, the hypothesis becomes accepted more quickly. At its core, science is about skepticism and doubt. We can now talk about my issues with the prevailing wisdom, in some quarters at least, about global warming. It has been said that anthropogenic global warming is settled science. Right there, alert reader, you should see a problem. NOTHING is EVER settled science. It is a contradiction in terms of the first order: the very definition of science means that a hypothesis is not and can never be settled. But a hypothesis can become widely accepted, under two conditions we have discussed: it has been subjected to and survived continued vigorous efforts to disprove it, and it can predict future outcomes. On both of these issues, the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis currently fails to meet the test. Lets take predictive first. Climate scientists have developed and continue to develop computer models to predict future climate from present conditions and forecasts of carbon dioxide emissions. The 25 or so main computer models currently in use give widely divergent answers as to future climate. That is to say, they are not predictive, and therefore not science. In order to become usefule, to be predictive, to become science, these computer models need to converge onto a smaller range of outcomes. Another test for predictive is whether these models have predicted the recent past. They have been in development and use for some time, so we can reasonably ask, How well have they done at prediction? The answer is, not well at all. There has been little to no global warming for the past two decades. People can argue about whether there has been none, or some, but in the last 20 years, the predicted global warming has not occurred. Clearly, the models are not taking into account all of the parameters affecting climate, or their treatment of the parameters is wrong, or the data is wrong. Finally, the best way to determine whether a computer model is predictive is to only tell the computer some of the data, say, through 1990, and then have the computer predict the future of the past 24 years. This has the advantage that you dont have to wait 24 years to see if the computer model is predictive. The computer only knows what you tell it, so you should be able to only give it the data through a certain date in the past, and run the model forward and compare it to reality. If your model correctly takes into account all the parameters, and your data is correct, you should be able to predict the Medieval Warming Period from data about climate prior to 900 AD. If this testing has been done, I havent heard about it. Lets look at our other condition, that the hypothesis must be subjected to and survive continued rigorous attempts to disprove it. This is the key element of science. Where are those vigorous attempts to disprove anthropogenic global warming? Science journals will not publish papers by scientists attempting to disprove the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. The editor of one prominent journal was fired arfter he had the temerity to publish an article challenging the accepted wisdom. That is not science. At least one prominent climate researcher destroyed his data rather than publish it. Publishing ones data and methods is essential to the scientific method. How can other scientists attempt to disprove your hypothesis if you refuse to publish your data, and when ordered to release it -- by a court! -- you destroy it instead? They are supposed to try to disprove your hypothesis. Thats what science is. Whatever that climate researcher is up to, it isnt science. People arguing against global warming on the most basic tenets of science -- it is not predictive, as it did not accurately predict the last twenty years -- have been vilified as anti-science and ignorant. That is not science. The essence of science is doubt and skepticism. There is something in the human experience, though, that is based on faith and certainty, that has an accepted dogma, the questioning of which amounts to heresy, and is punished. It is religion. So is anthropogenic global warming occurring? I dont know, and neither do you. You may BELIEVE, one way or the other, but you do not know. And until we start treating it as science, instead of religion, nobody will.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:57:32 +0000
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