Cross-posted from The Australian (my bold and underline added):
Consensus distorts the climate picture
IN February 2007, publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was received with international acclaim.
The vaunted IPCC process — multitudes of experts from more than 100 countries examining thousands of refereed journal publications, with hundreds of expert reviewers, across a period of four years — elevated the authority of the IPCC report to near biblical heights. Journalists jumped on board and even the oil and energy companies neared capitulation.
The veneration culminated with the Nobel Peace Prize, which the IPCC was awarded jointly with former US vice-president Al Gore. At the time, I joined the consensus in supporting this document as authoritative; I was convinced by the rigours of the process. Although I didn’t agree with some statements in the document and had nagging concerns about the treatment of uncertainty, I bought into the meme of: “Don’t trust what one scientist says; trust the consensus-building process of the IPCC experts.”
[TBI: Clearly then, humankind — and science in particular — has learned nothing from history, and the examples of Galileo, Copernicus, and Nicolas Steno.]
Six-and-a-half years later, nominally a week before the release of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), substantial criticisms are being made of leaked versions of the report as well as of the IPCC process. IPCC insiders are bemoaning their loss of scientific and political influence. What happened to precipitate this change?
The IPCC was seriously tarnished by the unauthorised release of emails from the University of East Anglia in November 2009 that became known as the Climategate affair. These emails revealed the “sausage-making” involved in the IPCC’s consensus-building process, including denial of data access to individuals who wanted to audit its data processing and scientific results, interference in the peer-review process to minimise the influence of sceptical criticisms and manipulation of the media.
Climategate was soon followed by the identification of an egregious error involving the melting of Himalayan glaciers. These revelations were made much worse by the response of the IPCC to these issues. Then came concerns about the behaviour of the IPCC’s chairman Rajendra Pachauri and investigations of the infiltration of green advocacy groups into the IPCC. All of this was occurring against a background of explicit advocacy and activism by IPCC leaders related to carbon dioxide mitigation policies.
[TBI: In other words, publicly barracking for the financial sector’s “market-based” “carbon pricing” “solutions” — see The Financialization of Nature.]
Although the scientists and institutions involved in Climategate were cleared of charges of scientific misconduct, the scientists and the IPCC did not seem to understand the cumulative impact of these events on the loss of trust in climate scientists and the IPCC process.
The IPCC’s consensus-building process relies heavily on expert judgment; if the public and the policymakers no longer trust these particular experts, then we can expect a very different dynamic to be in play with regards to the reception of the AR5 relative to the release of the AR4 in 2007.
THERE is another, more vexing dilemma facing the IPCC, however. Since the publication of the AR4, nature has thrown the IPCC a curveball: there has been no significant increase in global average surface temperature for the past 15-plus years. This has been referred to as a pause or hiatus in global warming.
Almost all climate scientists agree on the physics of the infrared emission of the CO2 molecule and understand that if all other things remain equal, more CO2 in the atmosphere will have a warming effect on the planet. Further, almost all agree that the planet has warmed across the past century and that humans have had some impact on the climate.
But understanding the causes of recent climate change and predicting future change is far from a straightforward endeavour.
The heart of the debate surrounding the IPCC’s AR5 is summarised by the graphic on this page that compares climate model projections of global average surface temperature anomalies against observations.
This diagram is Figure 1.4 from the first chapter of an AR5 draft. FAR denotes the First Assessment Report (1990), SAR the second (1995) and TAR the third (2001), which was followed by the AR4 (2007). It is seen that climate models have significantly over-predicted the warming effect of CO2 since 1990, a period during which CO2 concentrations increased from 335 parts per million to more than 400ppm.
The most recent climate model simulations used in the AR5 indicate that the warming stagnation since 1998 is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2 per cent confidence level. Based on early drafts of the AR5, the IPCC seemed prepared to dismiss the pause as irrelevant noise associated with natural variability. Apparently the IPCC has been under pressure from reviewers and its policymaker constituency to address the pause specifically.
Here is the relevant text from the leaked final draft of the AR5 summary for policymakers:
“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10-15 years.
“The observed reduction in warming trend over the period 1998-2012 as compared to the period 1951-2012 is due in roughly equal measure to a cooling contribution from internal variability and a reduced trend in radiative forcing (medium confidence).
“The reduced trend in radiative forcing is primarily due to volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the current solar cycle. However, there is low confidence in quantifying the role of changes in radiative forcing in causing this reduced warming trend. There is medium confidence that this difference between models and observations is to a substantial degree caused by unpredictable climate variability, with possible contributions from inadequacies in the solar, volcanic and aerosol forcings used by the models and, in some models, from too strong a response to increasing greenhouse-gas forcing.”
The IPCC acknowledges the pause and admits climate models do not reproduce the pause. I infer from these statements that the IPCC has failed to convincingly explain the pause in terms of external radiative forcing from greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar or volcanic forcing; this leaves natural internal variability as the predominant candidate to explain the pause.
Natural internal variability is associated with chaotic interactions between the atmosphere and ocean. The most familiar mode of natural internal variability is El Nino/La Nina. On longer multi-decadal time scales, there is a network of atmospheric and oceanic circulation regimes, including the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The IPCC refers to this as “unpredictable climate variability” in its statement above.
My chain of reasoning leads me to conclude that the IPCC’s estimates of the sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gas forcing are too high, raising serious questions about the confidence we can place in the IPCC’s attribution of warming in the last quarter of the 20th century primarily to greenhouse gases, and also its projections of future warming. If the IPCC attributes the pause to natural internal variability, then this prompts the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural internal variability.
Nevertheless, the IPCC concludes in the final AR5 draft of the summary for policymakers: “There is very high confidence that climate models reproduce the observed large-scale patterns and multi-decadal trends in surface temperature, especially since the mid-20th century.
“It is extremely likely that human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951-2010.
“Continued emissions of greenhouse gases would cause further warming. Emissions at or above current rates would induce changes in all components in the climate system, some of which would very likely be unprecedented in hundreds to thousands of years.”
WHY is my reasoning about the implications of the pause, in terms of attribution of the late 20th-century warming and implications for future warming, so different from the conclusions drawn by the IPCC? The disagreement arises from different assessments of the value and importance of particular classes of evidence as well as disagreement about the appropriate logical framework for linking and assessing the evidence. My reasoning is weighted heavily in favour of observational evidence and understanding of natural internal variability of the climate system, whereas the IPCC’s reasoning is weighted heavily in favour of climate model simulations and external forcing of climate change.
I do not expect my interpretation and analysis to be given credence above the IPCC consensus. Rather, I am arguing that the complexity of the problem, acknowledged uncertainties and suspected areas of ignorance indicate several different plausible interpretations of the evidence. Hence ascribing a high confidence level to either of these interpretations is not justified by the available evidence and our present understanding.
How to reason about uncertainties in the complex climate system and its computer simulations is neither simple nor obvious. Biases can abound when reasoning and making judgments about such a complex system, through excessive reliance on a particular piece of evidence, the presence of cognitive biases in heuristics, failure to account for indeterminacy and ignorance, and logical fallacies and errors including circular reasoning.
The politicisation of climate science is another source of bias, including explicit policy advocacy by some IPCC scientists. Further, the consensus-building process can be a source of bias. A strongly held prior belief can skew the total evidence that is available subsequently in a direction that is favourable to itself. The consensus-building process has been found to act generally in the direction of understating the uncertainty associated with a given outcome. Group decisions can be dominated by a single confident member.
Once the IPCC’s consensus claim was made, scientists involved in the IPCC process had reasons to consider the possible effect of their subsequent statements on their ability to defend the consensus claim, and the impact of their statements on policymaking.
The climate community has worked for more than 20 years to establish a scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. The IPCC consensus-building process played a useful role in the early synthesis of the scientific knowledge. However, the ongoing scientific consensus-seeking process has had the unintended consequence of oversimplifying the problem and its solution and hyper-politicising both, introducing biases into the science and related decision-making processes.
SCIENTISTS do not need to be consensual to be authoritative. Authority rests in the credibility of the arguments, which must include explicit reflection on uncertainties, ambiguities and areas of ignorance, and more openness for dissent. The role of scientists should not be to develop political will to act by hiding or simplifying the uncertainties, explicitly or implicitly, behind a negotiated consensus. I have recommended that the scientific consensus-seeking process be abandoned in favour of a more traditional review that presents arguments for and against, discusses the uncertainties, and speculates on the known and unknown unknowns. I think such a process would support scientific progress far better and be more useful for policymakers.
The growing implications of the messy wickedness of the climate-change problem are becoming increasingly apparent, highlighting the inadequacies of the “consensus to power” approach for decision-making on such complex issues.
Let’s abandon the scientific consensus-seeking approach in favour of open debate and discussion of a broad range of policy options that stimulate local and regional solutions to the multifaceted and interrelated issues surrounding climate change.
Judith Curry is a professor and chair of the school of earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, and president of Climate Forecast Applications Network. She is proprietor of the blog Climate Etc.
Barnaby Is Right 
Compulsory Government Indoctination Centres [ Schools ] and Consensus Socialist Style –
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http://www.womensgroup.org/998NEWLT.html
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THE WOMEN’S INTERNATIONAL MEDIA GROUP, INC.
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“Helping you to connect the Global to the Local”
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301/570-7525 301/774-3339
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P. O. Box 630 Olney, MD 20830
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UNDERSTANDING HOW THE HEGELIAN DIALECTIC IS TRANSFORMING THE WORLD TO BRING IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER
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“………….It was not until educational reform came to Oklahoma ten years ago that I realized these classes were not in vain. I saw everything that I was trained in happening before my eyes!
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I went back to the university and have read over 600 social psychology books in five years trying to find out for myself what kind of procedure was being used to change our kids and how it was being applied. I reintroduce myself to the dialectic process and its application. Since then I’ve been crossing the country, explaining the procedure of behavior change, how it’s done in the classroom, the workplace, and the political realm including transformational outcome based education, total quality management, and school to work.
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Veon: Dean, help me understand what the process is and where you are seeing it in society today?
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Gotcher: Well, the process is built on three stages which are more complex than this. There is thesis, which is simple, that’s you and your position and facts based on what you believe. Antithesis is somebody who’s different than you. The moment the two of you who are different are in the same room, there’s a potential relationship there. However, the only way you can get to it is synthesis [agreement in the relationship]. You and the other person have to put aside your differences for the sake of a relationship and try to find facts or elements of your belief systems that are in harmony. That’s socialism. Eventually if that becomes your agenda– the dialectic way of thinking–you have a socialist cosmic mind which puts aside anything that gets in the way of the relationship. That, by the way, means any information that’s introduced that breaks up human relationship is impractical and is irrational. This then is John Dewey’s
instrumentalism approach to this process. [When we look at] the organizations across this nation — it’s more like who’s not involved. It’s so pervasive. [It was] John Dewey who introduced this to our nation to deliver it from its traditional way of thinking back in the 20s and 30s.
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Veon: Traditional way of being . . .
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Gotcher: Right. Accountability to a higher authority. The patriarchal way means children are to obey their parents. That’s being rejected –its an old fashioned way of thinking. Now it’s partnership and dialoging to consensus. Finding common ground through the use of consensus– that’s synthesis. By the way, in a meeting we find that we are to focus in on what
we can accept for sake of a relationship. The church is really more troubling to me as far as its involvement in it. The state and the government has been in this process for some time, but the religious community is being pulled into it. I really don’t know if there’s going to be a turn around without God’s direct intervention…………………….”
“Let’s abandon the scientific consensus-seeking approach”.
Well there we have it. Abandon the science lest the tide begins to turn….
>>TBI: No Mick. That is NOT what the author wrote. Read it again. Carefully. There is a very big difference between saying “abandon the scientific consensus-seeking approach”, and saying “abandon the science”. Once again, right from the very beginning you base your entire argument on a Straw Man fallacy (ie, misrepresenting your opponent’s position). Everything you say subsequently is nonsense, because you are trying to argue against something that is NOT the author’s position in the first place.
… Ridicule so that you force climate scientists into submission. The script could have been written by big business itself. It probably was.
The jury is still out on this one.
>>TBI: Mick, that is exactly what the author (Judith Curry) is arguing!!! That there is NOT a consensus (ie, the jury is still out), and indeed, that the “consensus-seeking approach” to the science of climate change is itself causing problems for the IPCC, and thus impacting the level of trust that the public used to have in the scientific community. Seriously, are you dense? Or, are you just not bothering to read the articles carefully and completely, as you have admitted doing before regarding other topics.
You continue to use every piece of dissent and apparent contrary information you can dig up. You continue to use a linear model and then attack the science as a hoax when the data does (apparently) not fit. You continue to attack scientists for promoting a scam when they are dealing with an emerging science which is still a work in progress. Your attitude is like deriding the weather forecast when it is wrong – who cares about the fact that it is correct on most other occasions.
>>TBI: What’s this “you … your” rubbish? The article above is by Judith Curry. Not me. I’ve inserted two comments of my own in parentheses, the cartoon at the start, and the video at the end. That is all. The content, the argument made, is Judith Curry’s. Seriously Mick, I’m beginning to think that the only plausible explanations for your out-of-context, fallacy-ridden rants are that either (1) you are (again) not reading the articles fully, and are just racing to comment; or (2) you have very poor reading and comprehension skills.
You have little credibility BI as you have made up your mind before this debate even began. A lost cause!!
>>TBI: One word. Hypocrite. Learn what it means. *shakes head*
I would quote first Sir Bertrand Russell as a description of consensus “If 50 million people say a silly thing. It is still a silly thing.”
And a second quote from Thomas Carlisle ” I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
Spot on. Perfectly appropriate for this topic.
Albert Einstein who said “there are only 2 things infinite: the universe and human stupidity. But I’m not sure about the universe”.
Another quote from I know not whom: “The truth is called hate by those who hate the truth”
and lastly from Charles Bukowski: “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence”.
Some words of wisdom which will fall on deaf ears for the most part.
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence”.
Exactly!! The intelligent people are full of doubts – ie, “The science is uncertain“. The stupid ones are full of confidence – ie, “The science is settled“.
It’s a toss-up which has provided the most mirth here – the Monty Python clip or this barney. I can’t stop laughing.
The “barney” you find amusing Kevin is between the fate of our descendents and those who see no evil, hear no evil and do (well?) no evil.
>>TBI: No Mick. Once again, you are using logical fallacies. Amazingly, you manage to squeeze three fallacies into one small sentence – Begging The Question, Straw Man, and Ad hominem. (1) Begging The Question – the premise of your sentence is that the “fate of our descendents” is at stake; that is, in the specific context of the alleged future impacts of catastrophic climate change caused by man’s activities. Your sentence assumes this to be true. But it is in the fact unresolved; it is only true IF those arguing the IPCC position are correct. (2) Straw Man – you are misrepresenting the position of the other person. Sceptics do not “see no evil, hear no evil…”. That is NOT their position. (3) Ad hominem – by accusing others of being the kind who “see no evil, hear no evil…”, you are personally attacking their integrity, rather than addressing their actual argument.
My position is that those who intentionally try to scuttle future generations are in fact evil.
>>TBI: See previous comment. Here again, three logical fallacies in one short sentence – Begging the question, Straw Man, and Ad hominem.
Whilst I believe that climate change is real and is occurring
>>TBI: Mick, I believe that “climate change is real and is occurring” too. I suspect you will find almost everyone – sceptics included – has no problem at all in believing that. The point at issue — the core of the argument — is NOT whether climate change is real and is occurring. The issue is whether the climate change since the Industrial Revolution is in any way abnormal by comparison to the climate changes of millions of years past; if so, why, by how much, and what are the consequences.
I will NOT debunk a negative report until these keep stacking up over time. They have not done so.
>>TBI: Mick, there is so much confusion and illogic embedded in that sentence, it is difficult to know where to begin in trying to show you why. Ok, let’s try at least — In philosophy, the onus probandi (burden of proof) is on those who are making a claim (ie, man-made catastrophic warming) to prove their position beyond reasonable doubt. Now, by saying “I will NOT debunk a negative report…”, what exactly are you saying? IF you are saying that the reason why you will not “debunk a negative report” is because you believe the pro-AGW case is proven, and so will not change your mind until enough “negative report(s)” stack up, then you are holding a philosophically irrational, illogical belief. You are trying to reverse the onus probandi (burden of proof), by demanding that those NOT making the big claim prove that they are right. Now, you have written many times here on this blog that you “have an open mind” about this topic. Which is it? Are you agnostic about the Big Claim? Or, do you believe the Big Claim is proven, now want the onus probandi reversed, and will only change your mind if enough negative reports stack up? If so, then you are now contradicting yourself, in having said previously that you have an “open mind” on the topic.
As for the “straw man” label I respectfully say that this is precisely what is being used to try and paint me as a fool.
>>TBI: No one is misrepresenting your position Mick. I have simply pointed out some of the many, many occasions where your own words evidence that you are misrepresenting my/others’ position. Respectfully Mick, if you appear a fool, it is only because of the inconsistency, the internal contradictions, and repeated resort to logical fallacies contained in your own words.
Do you remember the federal election? Abbott attacked mercilessly for 2 years leading up to the election. The day Labor bit back Abbott claimed victim status and this was sold by the same media which had run a one sided propaganda campaign for the past 2 years. Funny really if it were not so perverse.
>>TBI: Red herring fallacy. Mick, for the love of Pete, this is completely irrelevant to the topic of climate change and science.
The stupid ones BI are people who thrust out their chests out and dismiss anything which they find to be an inconvenient fact.
>>TBI: Straw man fallacy. This is a misrepresentation of the other person’s position. By continuing to invoke Straw Men, you are making yourself appear very foolish.
Personally I prefer Albert Einstein whose contribution to science is unchallenged, even by the skeptics and knockers.
>>TBI: Er … Einstein’s contributions to science have been, and continue to be, widely challenged. Any “science” that is not challenged is NOT science; it is religious dogma. The nature of true science is that it must be continually challenged. The IPCC, and the “catastrophic man-made warming/we must act now” juggernaut, have done all in their power to AVOID and RESIST having their dire conclusions challenged. That is not science. It is religion.
Mankind’s stupidity certainly knows no bounds. All too often those who are happy to take society over the cliff …
>>TBI: Straw Man and Begging The Question fallacies. You are assuming a premise (actually, multiple premises) for your conclusion that itself remains unproven.
…are also the same folk who protect their (financial) patch at all costs whilst debunking anybody who thinks outside the square or dares to state the bleeding obvious.
>>TBI: Er … Mick, what you are accusing others of, actually describes YOU and your actions perfectly. This is known as “hypocrisy”.
Your view of the world on all probabilities is wrong. Whilst I concede that my view is no more than exactly that what I will never concede to is the view from those who grasp at every and any straw for no other reason than to debunk whilst at the same time ignoring all of the signs.
>>TBI: Straw Man fallacy. Misrepresentation of the other person’s actual position. AGAIN.
This is both morally wrong and ignorant. As I have stated before it is a symptom of older people many of whom find change of any sort unacceptable.
>>TBI: This is hilarious. You have now inferred, multiple times, that I am an “older” person, “80+”, etc. Take a look at the “ABOUT THIS BLOG” page.
You need to examine yourself BI.
>>TBI: I do. All the time.
Personally I prefer Albert Einstein whose contribution to science is unchallenged, even by the skeptics and knockers.
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http://www.science20.com/hammock_physicist/whats_wrong_emc2
Welcome to the internet where black can be white and white black. Personally I thought that Einstein’s formula was well tested at Hiroshima. Maybe I am wrong and the link above is right and Einstein got it all wrong.
Credibility is hard to get. Whilst climate scientists have worked for many years to get this they are not beyond being shown to be wrong. But one skirmish doth not a battle make. Whilst the few followers on this blog may disagree their attacks on the slightest dissent does little to disprove what is happening. As I have said many times climate change is never going to be linear and it is not about to happen in a year. This campaign has been playing out since 1950 and may have some time to go. Whilst the doubting Thomas’ can have their fun and debunk what are inconvenient problems which continue to surface they cannot hold back the tide.
http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/03-09-2013/125553-physics_culture_criminality-0/
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“……………….Everywhere physics can be evaluated, the same standard of fraud is found. Early in the twentieth century, numerous constants were derived-the most notable being Plank’s constant. An offshoot of Plank’s constant is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant (SBC). It says how much radiant heat is given off by a surface at any temperature. Simple observation indicates that the SBC is off by a factor of ten or twenty at normal temperatures. When climatologists apply the SBC to an “energy budget” for the earth, they get absurdities due to the error (Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997).
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The amount of energy from the sun entering the earth is said to be 235 watts per square meter average. The SBC says a surface at 15°C (earth’s average) must be giving off 390 W/m² (not considering corrections for emissivity). Most of it gets absorbed by the atmosphere and much of that gets radiated back. After doing this, climatologists could only attribute 24 W/m² to conduction of energy from the surface of the earth. That’s 6% as much conduction as radiation from the surface. Cooling fans would never by used if they only improved 6% over radiation alone. On top of that, a different energy budget produced by NASA without using the SBC shows 33% as much conduction as radiation moving energy from the surface of the earth. In other words, climatologists were forced into a bind when applying the SBC to the subject.
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A more credible result occurs when reducing the SBC by a factor of 20. Then 20 W/m² leaves the surface of the earth through radiation, while 373 W/m² leaves through conduction, convection and evaporation. That’s 5% radiation. With so little radiation, the greenhouse effect is miniscule.
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Should the SBC be reduced by a factor of 20 at normal temperatures? The first obvious fact is that there is no such constant. Correcting each substance for emissivity shows that complexities influence the result. The curve for the SBC bends sharply due to a fourth power with temperature. The line goes almost horizontal at normal temperatures, when it should be going down significantly with colder temperatures.
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Consider this: The average earth temperature of 15°C is that of a cold basement. The SBC says 390 W/m² is given off at that temperature. That’s almost four 100 Watt light bulbs per square meter from the walls of a dark, cold basement. It isn’t happening. Its 40% as much energy as falls on black asphalt at the equator at noon.
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Physicists assume so much radiation is actually given off by matter, but you don’t notice it, because the same amount is being absorbed, when all equilibrates. That assumption is absurd, because absorption and emission of large amounts of energy would not be invisible. Absorbed energy must be converted into heat before it can be re-emitted. If skin were absorbing and emitting 524 W/m² at 37°C, the heat would destroy tissue.
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The global warming issue shows the culture of fraud that physicists produced. Since the mid nineteenth century, a small handful of physicists assumed global warming could be produced by greenhouse gases. Most scientists disagreed, because the so-called greenhouse gases saturated at a small percent of the present levels of concentration in the atmosphere. Saturation means they absorbed all radiation available to them, so more gas cannot absorb more. Also, oceans absorb CO2 so strongly, that they determine the amount remaining in the atmosphere.
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Oceans are alkaline at pH 8.1. No one has ever found any other pH in the oceans apart from sheltered estuaries, related effluent and micro environments. This is because calcium carbonate is a strong buffer at pH 8.1. At that pH, water strongly absorbs CO2, which is an acid being absorbed by an alkali. Temperature also determines how much CO2 water will hold. As a result, CO2 moves into and out of the oceans with temperature changes.
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The reason why CO2 is increasing in a constant manner is because oceans are slowly warming, as they always do between ice ages. Oceans absorb solar energy to a depth of 10 meters, which causes heat to accumulate. Also, geothermal heat enters the oceans and accumulates in a significant manner over time. It is only an ice age which allows oceans to cool back down. Ice ages occur every 100 thousand years, and the next one will occur within 2-4 centuries.
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In spite of these assumptions, James Hansen et al published a paper in 1988 claiming CO2 emissions by humans are causing global warming (Hansen et al, 1988: — J. Geophys. Res., 93 (D8), 9341-9364.). He used a fudge factor to determine the amount. The origins of the fudge factor cannot be determined, but it is nothing but a curve extending the assumed change of the past into the future. The fudge factor is now called sensitivity. It means 100 parts per million increase in CO2 in the atmosphere will supposedly produce 0.6°C temperature increase. All climatologists go by this assumed sensitivity, and they only argue about secondary effects, mostly due to more water being vaporized with increases in temperature (called forcing). The predictions didn’t explain the cool-down over the past five years, so there is now talk of reducing the assumed sensitivity. That means Hansen’s fudge factor needs to be changed.
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That isn’t what science is supposed to be. The purpose of science is to eliminate errors and corruptions through measurements which verify. There are methods which do that, and methods which corrupt the processes. One sees almost no verification procedures in global warming “science,” only assumptions on top of assumptions………………….”
The trouble with your narrow minded view Kevin is that science is not an exact science in all respects. Whilst mathematics predicts ideal situations the real world often adds noise.
>>TBI: Exactly what the sceptical scientists argue.
You and BI have a bad habit of debunking anything which does not stick exactly to the script.
>>TBI: Straw Man fallacy. Misrepresentation of the other person’s position.
Science never will.
>>TBI: Mick, you are actually arguing the sceptic’s case for them. And you can’t even see it.
Turn on your weather report to see this in action.
>>TBI: Mick … weather. is. not. climate.