What’s Wrong With Global Warming?

Writes Greg Morin:

They keep saying climate change is “settled science” but I don’t think they know what that means. chemical bonding theory is settled science. gravitational theory is settled science. laws of motion is settled science. the weight of an electron is settled science. Why? Do you hear anyone debating these things? No, because they are based on reproducible results that allow one to make accurate, testable predictions 100% of the time.

No one disagrees that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so yes, that’s settled. The disagreement is over the degree of positive or negative feedback that will either attenuate or accentuate the effect of increasing greenhouse gas. And since the models haven’t accurately predicted the current pause in the rise in temperature for the last 15 years or so, then I guess something is wrong with the models isn’t it? Doesn’t seem very settled to me.

But that’s just one side of the issue. Even if it were definitely proven that temperature would rise 2°C by the end of the century, the rest of what follows, that is, wild predictions of famine, crop failure, etc is not “science” and it certainly isn’t settled. It is simply speculation based on a simplistic analysis (hot=dry=dead). But of course we need these wild predictions of impending doom, since if the scientists said temperature would go up but that’s about it we would all just shrug our shoulders and move on. The political class always needs an excuse to “do” something and this is the perfect one.

For some reason the well recognized fact that rising temperatures lengthens the growing season and expands the regions that support farming further northward is simply ignored in this analysis…it’s the usual sort of analysis you see from the Keynesian economists wherein they only highlight the seen effect they wish to focus on and ignore the unseen effects that don’t fit their desired narrative.

(Thanks to Jeff Deist)

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4:06 pm on July 30, 2014