Science that challenges Global Warming

Now seems like a good time to talk about the inconsistencies and errors in the climate models used by global warming alarmists to "prove" their theories about man-made global warming.

1) One of the most compelling papers on the subject, published in 1998, introduced a graph of mean temperature changes over the past millennium that seemed to indicate a very sharp rise in global temperatures during the 20th century.  The shape of the graph, an essentially steady trend with a sharp rise at the end, gave rise to the nickname "hockey stick."

Further analysis of the data and the computer simulation revealed that there was a massive amount of error in the final results.  The paper's authors issued a subsequent statement explaining that the purpose of the study was to illustrate that better data was needed, and that the results of their work had simply been misunderstood.

2) Another oft-cited study was published by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) under the leadership of NASA.  This study purported to show that the five of the ten hottest years on record for the United States occurred between 1990 and 2006.

Well, Steven McIntyre, the scientist who first doubted the validity of the "hockey stick" graph, has done it again.  He has uncovered problems with the temperature data used by GISS, as well as errors in their calculations.  While McIntyre's findings cannot be extrapolated to worldwide data, they certainly suggest that US weather data is far from perfect.  NASA quietly republished their findings, crediting McIntyre with the correction -- but they failed to issue a press release or otherwise notify the US news media. 

Gosh, you'd think that something like this would be considered muy importante.

But wait, there's more.  In this story published yesterday, climatologists admit that, "Existing global climate computer models tend to underestimate the effects of natural forces on climate change..."

In other words -- nature behaves unpredictably enough to render climate predictions inaccurate, even for time spans as short as two years.  So scientists have to continually tweak the forecasts by comparing the results of their models with real-world data.

So what conclusions can we draw from these stories:

• Our data collection methods are flawed, even here in the US, which has the most accurate system of collecting weather measurements.  That being the case, how well can we trust data from nations who have less quality control than we do?
• Our computer models are crude and filled with errors.  For example, the original "hockey stick" program threw out data that it didn't like.  And get this -- until Steven McIntyre published his analysis of the GISS/NASA study, NASA had declined to make both its raw data and its computational methods available for public scrutiny.  Absolutely amazing.
  
• There is ample evidence that solar activity contributes significantly to climate fluxuations.  Smoke and other aerosols also contribute significantly.  Yet current computer models often factor in little or no corrections for these effects, chiefly due to the fact that both phenomena are far from being well understood.
• If climatologists have difficulty forecasting weather patterns only two years in advance, then how can we trust them to make predictions 50, 100, or 300 years into the future?
• Much of the scare information in An Inconvenient Truth was based on the hockey stick chart and the original GISS/NASA temperature survey.  How reliable is Al Gore's message now, since we know that both studies were flawed?

As I have written before, the Earth's climate is a complex nonlinear dynamic system that is virtually impossible to model.  Fluxuations in the earth's climate occur constantly.  But I have yet to see good scientific proof, peer-reviewed and reproduced within good error limits, that conclusively proves that the current warming trend is entirely the fault of man.

(WizBang covered both of these stories extensively and also has roundups of other blogger's reactions. For the best global warming debunking on the web, visit Junkscience.com.)

Comments

[auto glass repairs]

Quite a few people discover that the annoyance of a scratched windshield is too significant to bear.