Why Global Warming is Probably a Crock

The American Thinker ^ | January 16, 2007 | James Lewis

[oldtimer2]

Why Global Warming is Probably a Crock

By James Lewis

As a scientist I've learned never to say "never." So human-caused global warming is always a hypothesis to hold, at least until climate science becomes mature. (Climate science is very immature right now: Physicists just don't know how to deal with hypercomplex systems like the earth weather. That's why a recent NASA scientist was wildly wrong when he called anthropogenic warming "just basic physics." Basic physics is what you do in the laboratory. If hypercomplex systems were predictable, NASA would have foolproof space shuttles --- because they are a lot simpler than the climate. So this is just pseudoscientific twaddle from NASA's vaunted Politically Correct Division. It makes me despair when even scientists conveniently forget that little word "hypothesis.")

OK. The human-caused global warming hypothesis is completely model-dependent. We can't directly observe cars and cows turning up the earth thermostat. Whatever the human contribution there may be to climate constitutes just a few signals among many hundreds or thousands.

All our models of the earth climate are incomplete. That's why they keep changing, and that's why climate scientists keep finding surprises. As Rummy used to say, there are a ton of "unknown unknowns" out there. The real world is full of x's, y's and z's, far more than we can write little models about. How do you extract the human contribution from a vast number of unknowns?

That's why constant testing is needed, and why it is so frustrating to do frontier science properly.

Science is difficult because nature always has another surprise in store for us, dammit! Einstein rejected quantum mechanics, and was wrong about that. Newton went wrong on the proof of calculus, a problem that didn't get solved until 1900. Scientists are always wrong --- they are just less wrong now than they were before (if everything is going well). Check out the current issue of Science magazine. It's full of surprises. That's what it's for.

Now there's a basic fact about complexity that helps to understand this. It's a point in probability theory (eek!) about many variables, each one less than 100 percent likely to be true.

If I know that my six-sided die isn't loaded, I'll get a specific number on average one out of six rolls. Two rolls of the die produces 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36. For n rolls of the die, I get (1/6) multiplied by itself n times, or (1/6) to the nth power. That number becomes small very quickly. The more rolls of the die, the less likely it is that some particular sequence will come up. It's the first thing to know in any game of chance. Don't ever bet serious money if that isn't obvious.

Now imagine that all the variables about global climate are known with less than 100 percent certainty. Let's be wildly and unrealistically optimistic and say that climate scientists know each variable to 99 percent certainty! (No such thing, of course). And let's optimistically suppose there are only one-hundred x's, y's, and z's --- all the variables that can change the climate: like the amount of cloud cover over Antarctica, the changing ocean currents in the South Pacific, Mount Helena venting, sun spots, Chinese factories burning more coal every year, evaporation of ocean water (the biggest "greenhouse" gas), the wobbles of earth orbit around the sun, and yes, the multifarious fartings of billions of living creatures on the face of the earth, minus, of course, all the trillions of plants and algae that gobble up all the CO2, nitrogen-containing molecules, and sulfur-smelling exhalations spewed out by all of us animals. Got that? It all goes into our best math model.

So in the best case, the smartest climatologist in the world will know 100 variables, each one to an accuracy of 99 percent. Want to know what the probability of our spiffiest math model would be, if that perfect world existed? Have you ever multiplied (99/100) by itself 100 times? According to the Google calculator, it equals a little more than 36.6 percent.

The Bottom line: our best imaginable model has a total probability of one out of three. How many billions of dollars in Kyoto money are we going to spend on that chance?

Or should we just blow it at the dog races?

So all ye of global warming faith, rejoice in the ambiguity that real life presents to all of us. Neither planetary catastrophe nor paradise on earth are sure bets. Sorry about that. (Consider growing up, instead.)

That's why human-caused global warming is an hypothesis, not a fact. Anybody who says otherwise isn't doing science, but trying to sell you a bill of goods.

Probably.

James Lewis

[AU72]

it equals a little more than 36.6 percent

That was about the same odds Rick Pitino went with to take the Celtics job and get Tim Duncan in draft lottery.

[adorno]

Whatever the human contribution there may be to climate constitutes just a few signals among many hundreds or thousands.

Even this scientist is being generous to the "global warming" hypothesis. The number of variables that need to be considered for "global warming" theory is more likely in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

[Ditto]

He questions the reliability of the current global climate (computer) models, but neglects to mention that these have been succesfully tested on real-world conditions.

Like they predicted the 2006 hurricane season?

[megatherium]

A hurricane season is not climate. The models are climate models.

[Old Professer]

" if you plug in the initial conditions resulting from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo (1991), the models correctly predict the amount and duration of the resulting global cooling."

That's the first I've heard of that claim; is this from a published study or another source?

BTW, how much global cooling was there and what years did it last?

[highimpact]

Are the models he builds models for the weather, or models for climate?

Both. He is a climate research professor at UW-Madison. He works off of federal grants to build computer models to test "global warming" theory. Part of that effort includes building local and regional models that are integrated into the global models.

This is the standard procedure for testing models, because you already have the data and you already have the outcome.

My point was that the models did not predict the effect of the Pinatubo eruption on global temperatures. The models were built to fit the data, not predict the outcome. If Pinatubo were to erupt today, the models would not be able to predict the eruption's effect on global temperatures beyond a day or two into the future.

[CharacterCounts]

This is the clearest, most easily understood essay about why the climate models can't predict the future weather accuratily that I have ever read.

I read in a Smithsonian article at least 10 years ago that global warming models cannot predict anthing because the scientists creating the model have to make thousands of assumptions - each with some degree of innacuracy.

[Ditto]

A hurricane season is not climate. The models are climate models.

Bull. Modeling weather is far less complex with fewer variables and less unknowns than modeling climate, about which we understand very little.

[Old Professer]

One thing that ought to be taken into account is that warming winters wiil work to reduce fuel use for heating buildings and automatically reduce CO2 output as well.

[goldstategop]

Liberals have sold the public a bill of goods over something that might happen 100 years from now. But what if it never comes to pass? The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells us no event in Nature can be predicted exactly as people expect. Yet liberals want us to believe they know what global warming is going to do to the planet decades from now when they keep being surprised by today's weather. That is neither rational nor based on science.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Old Professer]

A Lego isn't a set; but if you collect one Lego a year for a number of years, you will have a set.

It's silly to try and divorce climate from weather; since the study of climate is based on observations of weather.

If everybody could just reduce his energy use by 10% we could know far better what the influence is.

[pjd]

Those models only worked after the fact.

This is the standard procedure for testing models, because you already have the data and you already have the outcome. Otherwise it would take far too long to verify a model's accuracy.

No. I have developed hydro-dynamic computer models at the National Labs and in Industry for many years and have worked closely with experimentalist while trying to validate the models. Comparisons with existing data are only for qualitative purposes or maybe to try and infer the value of unknown coefficients. However, a models predictive capabilities are *only* based on its ability to predict outcomes apriori (before the measurement)

The type of testing you are refer to only appropriate for semi-emperical models. These are models which are always done after the fact and use experimental inputs as part of the model as a means to try and understand process corelations in a system that is beyond our ability to fully model. These are NOT predictive models.

[goldstategop]

Exactly. The Precautionary Principle would say wait until we have definite proof global warming is real before spending billions of dollars to address it. But for politicians who eye is on their immediate reelection, a concern about whether the models are correct matters less than whether they can convince the public they have a quick fix to a very esoteric problem. I think Bjorn Lomberg, who with other scientists compiled a list of problems the world has to work on, made the point that global warming did not make the Top Ten List.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

There's the oldest fallacy in the world: the appeal to authority. Algore isn't a climate scientist and yet people treat him as knowledgeable on the subject.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[goldstategop]

Let me get this straight: we know for sure the planet is going to warm up dramatically within our lifetime but we can't predict with certainty how our investments would do on the stock market day to day? Now THAT is a bunch of crock!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[LM_Guy]

Thanks for the post that clearly shows a very high correlation that CO2 levels and global temperatures track each other very well.

You just showed that the Hypothesis is probably correct !!!

Not that humans cause Global Warming but, Rising CO2 levels cause Global Warming.

But, It is also an undeniable fact that we humans are dumping billions of tons of CO2 in the air and atmospheric CO2 levels have risen quite dramatically over the last 100-150 years.

[ancient_geezer]

Thanks for the post that clearly shows a very high correlation that CO2 levels and global temperatures track each other very well.

Actually you miss the point of that graph by a wide margin. Temperature leads the change in CO2 for the most part in that data. As temperature rises, CO2 is released into the atomosphere from the oceans, and biosphere. It is an effect not a cause of temperature change insofar as it relates to icecore studies such as in depiction #11. Note that each pixel of that graph is around 1kys worth of information and still it demonstrates an extreme lag in change of CO2 concentrations.

 

CO2-Temperature Correlations

Summary

• "(1) correlation does not prove causation, (2) cause must precede effect, and (3) when attempting to evaluate claims of causal relationships between different parameters, it is important to have as much data as possible in order to weed out spurious correlations.
  
  ***
  
  Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years.  Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2.  In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm.  Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years."

[ see also: Indermuhle et al. (2000), Monnin et al. (2001), Yokoyama et al. (2000), Clark and Mix (2000) ]

• "Other studies periodically demonstrate a complete uncoupling of CO2 and temperature "

[see: Petit et al. (1999), Staufer et al. (1998), Cheddadi et al., (1998), Raymo et al., 1998, Pagani et al. (1999), Pearson and Palmer (1999), Pearson and Palmer, (2000) ]

• "Considered in their entirety, these several results present a truly chaotic picture with respect to any possible effect that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration may have on global temperature.  Clearly, atmospheric CO2 is not the all-important driver of global climate change the climate alarmists make it out to be."

 

Global warming and global dioxide emission and concentration:
a Granger causality analysis

http://isi-eh.usc.es/trabajos/122_41_fullpaper.pdf

•  "We find, in opposition to previous studies, that there is no evidence of Granger causality from global carbon dioxide emission to global surface temperature. Further, we could not find robust empirical evidence for the causal nexus from global carbon dioxide concentration to global surface temperature.

[megatherium]

There's the oldest fallacy in the world: the appeal to authority.

You cannot entirely divorce what a writer says from his level of expertise when he is commenting on a highly technical subject. And all I did was ask what the writer's expertise was.

[edsheppa]

One can only hope he's "dumbing it down" for the masses as his statistical reasoning is quite weak. For example, yes, the probability of each specific pair of values on tossing two dice is 1/36, but the probability of getting a sum of seven is 1/6 or ~17%. The probability of getting one of just three of the eleven different sums (a six, seven or eight) is 16/36 or ~44%. If you were to toss 100 dice, the average of their values would be between 3.4 and 3.6 (just 4/100 of the possible range of between 1 and 6) about 46% of the time.

Global warming predictions are more like these aggregate sort of statistics. For example, let's say that there are indeed 100 GW variables and we can predict each with an accuracy of 99% but we only have to get 90 of the 100 variables right to correctly predict some global warming threshold. The chances of getting 90 of the 100 correct is about 99.9999993744482%. Betting against global warming would be like buying lottery tickets, a sucker's bet.

As a person who's skeptical about global warming hype, I hate being tarnished by association with arguments like Lewis makes.

[RightWhale]

There are two things:
1. global warming;
2. Global Warming.
The second one is the real one.