February 09, 2010
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September 07, 2008

Science slows global warming!

By James Lewis
Yes, kids, science is a wonderful thing. But not nearly as wonderful as climate modeling, which can perform supernatural miracles. Honest! Climate modeling can raise the level of the oceans (even without Obama's intervention), it can burn up the planet a hundred years from now, and Shazzam! -- the models can save us again -- all without leaving your video games, and without the benefit of the real-world data that you need for boring old regular science.

At least, that's what Nature -- the oldest science journal in the world, going back to Isaac Newton -- now claims.

According to credulous journalist extraordinaire Katharine Sanderson (who has no degree in climatology), we are supposed to believe that "sophisticated climate chemistry models have shown that the (Montreal) Protocol has done much more than rescue the planet from sunburn."

For all you great unwashed, the Montreal Protocol prohibited CFC's, which used to keep our refrigerators cold. Now we find out that not only has Montreal saved the world's ozone layer, but it has even postponed the dreaded catastrophe of Global Warming!

How do we know that? What's the actual evidence?

Well, ummmm... well... duuuhhh

Oh yes, it's a "sophisticated climate chemistry model"!

Phew.

Nature.com tells us that

"The team worked out a predicted value for chlorine levels in the stratosphere ... in the year 2030, on the basis of how quickly chlorine levels were rising in the late 1960s and early 1970s.


"Chlorine is known to be the main driver for atmospheric ozone depletion in the stratosphere, ...

"They ran this value of chlorine -- 9 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) -- through their computer models simulating climate chemistry. For comparison, they also ran the models with a chlorine level of 3.5 ppbv, which was the level in the stratosphere by the late 1990s. ... (The computer model) showed what effect this ozone loss would have had on the planet's climate at the surface. And those changes are significant.

"'What we're seeing here is a big signal,' says (John) Pyle (the Cambridge scientist who led the modeling team)."

So -- pay attention to this, now, kids -- these video gamers extrapolated the chlorine numbers from fifty years ago, before satellites were available to measure that stuff. Then they took another number from the 1990s. Then they projected two decades ahead to 2030 what would have been the value of chlorine without and without the Montreal Protocol.

Then they took credit for the "improvement" in chlorine levels, which are supposed to stand for ozone levels, which are supposed to stand for global warming levels 22 years from now.

Got that?

It is the ultimate example of scientific hubris. 

As Bjorn Lomborg just wrote in The Guardian, of all places,

"Much of the global warming debate is perhaps best described as a constant outbidding by frantic campaigners, producing a barrage of ever-more scary scenarios in an attempt to get the public to accept their civilisation-changing proposals. Unfortunately, the general public -- while concerned about the environment -- is distinctly unwilling to support questionable solutions with costs running into tens of trillions of pounds. Predictably, this makes the campaigners reach for even more outlandish scares."

And Freeman Dyson, who is a real theoretical physicist, not the fake kind, wrote in his autobiography that: 

"...all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. ... I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models."

In no other field of science can you create a garbage-in/garbage-out video game about one of the most complex nonlinear systems known to science, the earth climate, and make wild guesses and get paid for it -- not to mention being celebrated in the pages of Nature. You just take a data point from fifty years ago, add another point from the 1990s, project it all to 2030, make inferences from chlorine to ozone to global warming, publish the result, and get celebrated for your non-existent proof of current pop orthodoxy about Armageddon.

And no, this is not "a big signal" in climate evidence, Professor Pyle. It's a big signal in your model. If you tweak a dozen other variables you could change that result without ever leaving your desk. And what's more, you and all the other global warming frauds out there know that perfectly well.

This is a sad reflection of the corruption of the scientific enterprise. Non fingo hypothesi, said Newton when he was urged to perform a similar miracle in his time: I do not make wildly speculative hypotheses. Today we do perform miracles of prediction, and earn Nobel Peace Prizes for superannuated politicians, not to mention billions of dollars to support fraudulent superstition in the name of science.

Today's climate modeling has gone far beyond Isaac Newton. Or beyond any other scientist in history, for that matter. Today, we can not only predict the things that will happen to Planet Earth a hundred years from now within a few degrees Centigrade, we can also tell you about all the terrible things that woulda happened if our Green politicians hadn't passed the Montreal Protocol.

Whoever said scientists don't believe in miracles? 

James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com
on "Science slows global warming!"
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