WintonsWorld and Global Warming
During my 33 years at Reuters, I spent more than three years as Science and Technology Correspondent. Even in the mid-90s, global warming was being misreported. The mainstream media in general and the BBC in particular left the impression that humans were indeed hotting-up the planet, and that there was no question about the science proving this.
I was amazed to find when I took over the SciTech beat that the science linking human produced CO2 to the warming of the climate was distinctly sparse. I had access to many of the world’s top climate scientists and almost none were prepared to declare a proven link. Many of the dire predictions accepted by the mainstream media were based on algorithms containing much subjective material. A smarter person than me, author Michael Crichton, wrote a novel, “State of Fear”, musing about ruthless and self-righteous people wanting to use false global warming propaganda to pursue a political agenda.
I’ve followed the story since and nothing much has changed, except that many politicians have embraced human induced climate change as gospel, and are using this to make important policy decisions. In Britain, Labour’s Ed Miliband and weak Tories led by coalition partner the Liberal Democrats’ Chris Huhne, gave us the mantra that the use of fossil fuels must be ended to be replaced by renewables. That’s a worthy ambition perhaps, but in fact will end up bankrupting us, while we cower in caves as the lights go out and the climate remains unchanged, at least by human hand. Even a well documented scandal – so-called “climategate”, in which prominent warmist scientists had clearly been shown cooking the books, had little effect. Now in some quarters, if you dare to question the conventional wisdom you are branded a “climate denier”, and even threatened with jail.
As the U.N. climate change conference looms in Paris, it is, I think, important to spell out contrary views, particularly if they are firmly science-based.
My first story on WintonsWarmingBlog reports former GreenPeace leader Patrick Moore’s speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation. You’ll also find some of my other blogs on global warming in this section.
I think, important to spell out contrary views, particularly if they are firmly science-based.
So where are they? the science based views.
One cannot prove a hypothesis to be true.
See, science is not a matter of ‘truth’ but whether a hypothesis can be constructed which can have falsifiable tests made of it.
If it can, bravo – you’ve built a scientific hypothesis – which may or may not have predictive power.
If it has, ie, experimental data are in accord with its predictions then crack open the bubbly.
But is it ‘proven’ to be true?
No.
Proofs lie in the realm of mathematics and logic.
No scientific law or theory can be ‘proven’. They’re simply really good models for how reality seems to work – and can be overturned with a single well-performed experiment.
So.
Do raised CO2 levels in the atmosphere alone change climate?
NO.
Does a rapidly changing CO2 level lead to increased heat absorption in the troposphere?
Probably. Conservation of energy is good guide.
Does that lead to more water vapour in the atmosphere?
Probably. Partial pressures vary with temperature in an exponential fashion (Antoine’s law)
Does that extra CO2 and water vapour cause more solar absorption?
Probably.
But it cannot be ‘proven’ because we statistically large number of Earths to do the experiment with.
In the meantime, the correlation appears reasonably robust – and given the hazard that climate change (if anthropogenic and real) presents, it seems prudent to do something about limiting GHGs.