One thing that has always bothered me about the Global Warming crowd is their reliance on their climate change models. The theories are sound, don't get me wrong about that, but proving those theories using the models has always been lacking. And then to use the results of those lacking models to the detriment of international economies without actual consensus on the data is just not wise.
For example, the driving force of atmospheric carbon dioxide to warm the average atmospheric temperature is logarithmic. If the increase in volume of carbon dioxide is exponential, then the temperature change is linear, which since 1975, most climate models tend to demonstrate. If the volume increase in carbon dioxide is only linear, then the driving force tapers off so that in 30 to 60 years, it does not matter how much carbon dioxide is being injected into the atmosphere. The rabid global warming preventers are not content with proving a human component in increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they must show an exponential increase to justify their lobbying of changing economic policies.
But this week, new data were thrown into the climate science community that have the researchers scratching their heads. The true believers don't know what to make of it, since no model predicted that oceanic temperatures would decrease, with logarithmic or linear carbon dioxide increase. The ocean acts a huge heat sink and is viewed as the source of confirmation for atmospheric temperature increase, but it takes 30 to 60 years after the atmospheric trend to show in the ocean temperatures. The climate change believers' first instinct is to call this heat loss noise in the overall trend, which it very well could be. Straight lines don't exist in nature.
The skeptics of human-driven climate change call the new data what they are, new data and call for more research. As a skeptic myself, I have always thought that it was arrogance to believe that humans could cause this much atmospheric change with how little carbon dioxide we actually contribute to the carbon dioxide necessary for most climate models to drive global warming. We don't know enough yet about climate science and we should not trust those who say they do and have closed discussion on more research.
Here's the thing - as soon as the models can accurately tell them what yesterday (or last year, or ten years ago) looked like, I'll have better faith in their projections for tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteThat's probably a simplistic viewpoint, but I'd feel the same way about a fortune teller. If they couldn't accurately read my past, I wouldn't trust them to have any particular insight regarding my future.
Brenda:
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly my point: all the hoopla is based on the climate computer models, which change whenever new data gets collected. Basing government policy on models is not the same as basing them on reality. At this stage in climate science, we do not "know" what "reality" is.