Clan Webb

Continuing on from my previous post, there were two items that showed up in mid-December that continue the critics’ drumbeat against the idea of anthropogenic climate change.

First, there’s the problem of faulty climate models. A study published in the Royal Meteorological Society’s International Journal of Climatology analyzed the validity of commonly used climate models. The authors took the seemingly obvious approach of asking how the models performed over a short period when they can be compared to actual measurements. The answer was, not very well at all.

ScienceDaily has a good summary here, but early in the summary, one of the study’s authors tells the story:

“The usual discussion is whether the climate model forecasts of Earth’s climate 100 years or so into the future are realistic,” said the lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester. “Here we have something more fundamental: Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? “It seems that the answer is no.”

The basic problem is that the climate models say that the lower and middle atmosphere should be warming much faster than the surface. Actual measurements show that, in fact, these parts of the atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface. This begs the question about why we should trust predictions of dramatic climate change over the next several decades when those very models didn’t predict changes we are having now? This is somewhat like choosing to bet the house on lottery numbers picked by a psychic who could not correctly deduce your hair color.

Even better, the story points out that an earlier study simply explained away this discrepancies by claiming they were errors in the data. Does anyone else see a problem with saying that the theories are right and the data is wrong? I thought the scientific method dictated that theories adapted to the data, not the other way around. Just another example of how this is no longer about science, but about politics.

Next, there’s a clearly stated, well-written open letter to the UN by a slew of scientists making the argument that trying to “fix” the climate is a fool’s errand and the right course of action is to plan to adapt.

They summarize:

The current UN focus on “fighting climate change,” as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity’s real and pressing problems.

Read the entire letter to see a simple takedown of the “consensus” myth, especially as it relates to the UN’s IPCC reports.

As has been said elsewhere, I believe this monolith of anthropogenic global warming believers is being shown to be a house of cards. As the next few years pass and the trends show a plateau or even a cooling period, these doomsayers will look more and more like the guy with the scraggly beard and the sandwich board reading “The End is Nigh”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 9:45 am by Wyatt and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.