How much Real Science is there in the science of climate change?

I read the thread on climate change, and that inspired me to write this. It is quite long, but it is a real scientific appraisal of the current science of climate change, coming from a scientist who hasn't drunk the kool-aid. Yes, there is a somewhat detailed explanation of the scientific method, and I will need to incorporate those problems in a later post. But, this illustrates the real reason why the science of climate change is so flawed that your typical person on the street doubts its credibility.

The Pseudo-science of Climate Change


The climate is still gradually warming. So what? Nobody, with any sort of brain, denies this fact. “Global warming” is a reality. The real “scientific” controversy concerns why the climate is warming, not whether or not it is. Before Al Gore’s popularization of Michael Mann’s 1998 “Hockey Stick”, there really wasn’t a “scientific” controversy. The real inconvenient truth is that pseudo-science has replaced historical records as a basis for drawing conclusions. That is, “faith” in statistically flawed methodology has replaced empiricism (i.e., knowledge gained by observation).

[I wrote the following paragraph about the scientific method to be sufficient to give the reader enough background information about what real science is and isn’t, to evaluate my arguments about what is called “climate science”. It combines the essentials of more than five lectures from my Philosophy of Science course into one verbose, but essential, paragraph. If you feel that you understand the scientific method, you can skip it. However, since many people who call themselves scientists don’t understand it, apparently, you may want to look it over]

A real scientific experiment involves manipulation of one variable and assessing its effects on changes in another variable. For example, to test a trivial hypothesis like “water is important for plant growth” a scientist would manipulate one variable (i.e., the amount of water given to the plant) and record changes in another variable or variables (e.g., measures of plant growth such as height, number of branches formed, number of leaves, etc.), for some defined period of time. So, in order to answer the question “Is water important for plant growth?” one would test for differences in growth of plants given different amounts of water using an ANOVA. Now, here’s where the assumption of “normality” comes in. A real scientist wouldn’t compare the growth rate of just one plant with other plants, each given different amounts of water, because the assumption of normality suggests that there will be substantial difference between plants given some fixed amount of water (i.e., the growth rate of any given plant species is normally distributed around some average for any fixed amount of water), a real scientist would use groups of plants randomly assigned to different fixed amounts of water. Each of these groups contain enough plants to be statistically valid in reflecting the variance of the whole plant population. Then, what really gets tested is what is called the “Null Hypothesis”, in this case that is the hypothesis that: “water has no effect on plant growth”. The experiment is then conducted, and the groups of plants are each given some same amount of water each day for, say, a month. At the end of the month, the average growth rate of each group of plants is determined. This is the empirical data (i.e., what was observed to have actually occurred over the month). What is important, here, for the climate argument, is that the data are irrefutable. The data represent what actually happened. To draw conclusions from the data a scientist would use an ANOVA to test if the groups of plants differed in their growth rates. The reason why the null hypothesis is so important in a real science experiment is it is the only thing that can be tested to give further knowledge, in this case, about water and the growth rate of plants. There are only two possible outcomes in a real scientific experiment. The null hypothesis can either be rejected or not. In the plant example, the null hypothesis is that “the amount of water will not affect the growth rate”. If with some level of statistical certainty (e.g., an arbitrary ratio of confidence, for most biological experiments set at 5/100 or 1/100, meaning that the difference in growth rate observed in the experiment (i.e., the empirical data) would only happen by chance either five or one time(s) for every 100 times the experiment was executed, meaning it’s occurrence by chance alone would be rare). In this case, what the ANOVA provides is a ratio that gives an exact probability of what was observed. This ratio, will be correct, only to the extent that all of the assumptions for using an ANOVA are met. The ratio is an unbiased estimate of the probability of the effect. We all know that water is essential for the growth of plants. So, if somebody were to actually conduct the absurd experiment I describe, the actual ratio would be much a much smaller value than 5/100 or 1/100. It would probably be less than 1/10,000,000 (i.e., the data observed would have occurred less than 1 time in ten million replications of the experiment). In the example, we would reject the null hypothesis. That is, since we have data that would have occurred by chance less than one in ten million times, it is very highly PROBABLE that water amount affects the growth rate of plants. Notice: in real science, there are no absolutes other than the empirical data at hand. There is always some probability, no matter how small, that we could be wrong and reached the wrong conclusion. If science didn’t work this way, it couldn’t advance itself. The only promise that real science makes is that it will get us closer to the “truth” than we were before we used it. Real science does not deal in absolute “realities”, it only provides probabilities that suspected “realities” are, indeed, real.

Climate scientists, who support anthropogenic (i.e., “man-made”) causes of the current warming trend, base their suppositions on proxy data. This data is obtained from over 100 different “proxies” of climatic “temperatures”, most notably, tree ring diameters, changes in ice-bore depths, coral growth rates, etc. To a non-scientist, these “proxies” all seem like a reasonable way to study trends in climate change, and to an extent, they are. The real problem with the conclusions drawn from these data are the statistical manipulations through which they are processed, and the assumptions that are made about their actual meaning. All statistical manipulations involve assumptions. In a real scientific experiment, the assumptions are usually grounded in well established, empirically derived, laws or facts. For example, several hundred years of observation have revealed that most, if not all, biological variables are normally distributed for the populations of living things of interest. This has led to the assumption that, for many statistical tests to be valid (e.g., an Analysis of Variance, or ANOVA), the variable being measured must be normally distributed in the population from which the samples to be compared are drawn. So, what does this mean in application to current climate science?

To be honest, the main problem is confirmation bias, or more accurately, the statistical manipulation of the data to enhance the appearance of what is actually going on. Let me preface this with a little rhetorical story: Suppose you wake up one morning and notice that a really gross pimple has formed on your nose. You know that the pimple is there because you see it in the mirror with your own eyes. You have looked at your face in a mirror thousands of times and have never seen the pimple before. The pimple is so gross you worry that it may be something more than just a pimple. Your friend is a professor of anatomy and physiology at a local university. He is a “scientist”. You ask your friend about the nature and potential adverse consequences of the pimple. But, instead of answering your question, he ignores it and attempts to convince you, using statistics, that the pimple really isn’t there. After hours of “scientific” explanation, you begin to agree with your friend, and conclude that the pimple is a product of your overactive imagination.

 

Continued:

There are two ways my little story can be applied to climate science. To those of you who believe in an anthropogenic cause for global warming, you will most likely think that it an analogy for what climate “deniers” are trying to do. After all, you know that we are on a fossil fuel burning course to catastrophe, and the deniers are trying to convince you that it doesn’t exist. To those of you who recognize the real problem with proxies and hockey sticks, you will see it for what I intended it to be.

There are three historical “facts” in recorded earth climate history, that until 1998, were accepted as historical “fact”. The first wasn’t about climate, per se. However it produces the first “modern” indication that climate naturally cycles as a function of nature. While it may not seem important to you that Julius Caesar spent almost a page of his documentation of the “Gallic Wars” describing his success in cultivating Roman (Italian) grapes in Briton, it provides documented evidence that the climate of what we now call England was warm enough to support the growth of Mediterranean grapes at that time. Although it hasn’t been given a climate “name”, it does provide the first written basis of the observation that the climate changes (at least in the northern hemisphere) quite dramatically, and that the cycle is about 1000 years in length (i.e., the Romans invaded Briton in about 30 B.C., or about 2030 years ago). Now jump ahead in history to around the year 1100 A.D. The British have given the world many things, but one of their most important legacies was taxing documentation. The Britons were not the first to impose taxes, but they were the first to painstakingly document them. By looking back at those tax records, we can see that wine was a very important industry in Briton at that time. Grapes flourished in most regions of the land mass we now call the U.K. and Ireland. This medieval event is important because it occurs during what scientists used to call the Medieval Warming period. Although written records about climate don’t exist (i.e., it would be another three hundred years before the thermometer was invented), we can use written records of what people were able to do as REAL proxies for what was occurring climatically. If it was warm enough to grow grapes in England in 1100, but wasn’t as recently as 1965, one has to conclude that something changed in the climate of the northern hemisphere between those two dates. Well, another documented event did occur, it was called the Maunder Minimum or Little Ice Age. It started around 1400 and ended about 150 years ago. It was way too cold to grow grapes in Britain then, and during the middle of it (the trough in northern hemisphere climate temperatures), the Thames river annually froze to a depth sufficient to support large cultural events called “Frost Fairs” on its ice. The last winter an Englishman was able to cross the Thames without a boat occurred in 1814. In the southern hemisphere, similar events occurred. A drawing of Mount Kilimanjaro dated to the early 12th century shows the African protuberance to have a top without ice or snow. If you have recently been in Tanzania, you the snow covered peak of the mountain is still a spectacular sight. Clearly, it was warmer in Africa then then it is now. One more event in American history, with which most Americans, at least, are aware, is of General Washington crossing the Delaware River in 1776. The most famous picture shows ice against the sides of the boat several feet thick.

Why are these historical events important to today’s discussion of climate change? The current “science” of climate change has erased them. Starting with Michel Mann’s “Hockey Stick” publication in 1998, estimates of climate have systematically refuted that those historical events described above ever occurred. Many readers of this may be familiar with the “Climategate” fiasco in the 2000s, although most people don’t actually know what the fraud Mann perpetrated actually involved. What Mann and his colleagues did, was to substitute actual data acquired from temperature sensors (thermometers) for the proxy data, especially the tree ring components, for the last, 20 I think, years (1978-1997). The effect of this substitution, was to dramatically change the slope of the acceleration of the warming effect graphed as the tip of the hockey stick for those years. More important than the fraud involved, however, was the reason why they perpetrated it in the first place. Mann had empirical evidence of climatic events like droughts and storms, and he concluded that the proxy data for those years was unreliable. Mann knew that those events occurred, and it was easy for him to rationalize why he substituted the thermometer data for the proxies. The point of this is that, if he and the reviewers did not have experiential knowledge of what had actually happened climatically during those years, he would never have been able to rationalize the fraud and he would probably still be banned from scientific publication today.

There are overwhelming human-collected data that suggest that the Medieval Warming and Maunder Minimum occurred. There are human-created historical records to that effect. Yet, all of the proxy data-based climate science says they never happened. The amount of statistical averaging done, based on assumptions nobody has any real knowledge of the validity of, caused an averaging effect, essentially erasing them from history. Just like the pimple on the nose of person in my story. Either people grew grapes in England in the Medieval ages (and again today) or they didn’t/don’t. Either Londoners partied on the ice of the Thames in the 1700s or they didn’t. Either Mt. Kilimanjaro lost its snow covered top in the 1300s or it didn’t. Either there was a foot of ice on the Delaware River when Washington crossed it or there wasn’t. This illustrates kind of faith in pseudo-scientific nonsense that boils down to “it must be true because the scientific machines don’t lie”, and it seems a bit religious to me. More religious, even, than saying that climate change is part of God’s plan. That’s a pretty strong accusation, coming from an atheist scientist, don’t you think?

In regard to the scientific method, none of the current "science" of climate change has been accumulated using it. No actual experiments have been conducted. All the speculation comes from regression models which are of questionable validity. In fact, the only quasi-experiment performed, was performed by nature, herself. Think about this. Over the past 16, or so, years, much of the western world has put severe brakes on production of greenhouse gasses. In the same time, Asia has more than doubled their emissions, to the point where every pound of gas the west doesn't emit, China and India more than double their emissions. So, for the last decade and a half, the amount of greenhouse emissions has almost doubled in rate over the preceding decade and a half. The doubling of the emissions is accompanied, over the same period, by a decreasing acceleration in global warming. It's about ten times lower today that the hockey stick predicts it would be, and almost half of what it was in the 60s and 70s. Yes, the world is getting warmer, but the warming has slowed while greenhouse gas emissions have increased. Where is the science in that?

That’s what I find humorous about the argument that “an overwhelming majority of scientists support that the cause of global warming is anthropogenic”. As described above, the scientific method is dependent on empiricism. Because these people deny historical (empirical) data, my ultimate conclusion is that these so-called scientists are Scientists In Name Only. Yes, SINOs!

 

Well , I'v read your "little science paper " and I want to say your's explain's it so well , the cult of Science , is not all powerful , and you said it all in such a short sharp way . please keep up the good work .
P.S my uncle said the same as you for year's , he always said the weather ran in cycles , some cycles longer much longer than other's .

 

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As far as human responsibility for climate change goes - I think that we are once again falling into the same old delusion that we are at the center of things.

Just like the Earth used to be the center of Universe. Then when that didn't work, we must still be at the center of our system, and the Sun revolves around us.

And now that all else has failed, we are giving ourselves credit for at least being in control of the Earth's climate.

My sense is that the Earth will be fine, and that we'll need to get over ourselves and adapt.

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Take a little read

https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2017/04/26/environmentalists-are-dead-wrong-n2317342

toy

 

Yes, to the extent that you are talking about pollutants, I agree with you. However, the argument isn't about gases that are pollutants. The argument is carbon, in general, and specifically carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant! It is necessary for plant survival, and at concentrations that aren't irritating, it's not toxic to any species. The problem with solar is that it is still pretty expensive. If you hadn't received government subsidies for your solar system, how long would it take you to pay off the cost of the system with a $110 savings/month. I'm not suggesting that, for you, amortizing the system over time won't pay off in spades, but you are in a very atypical situation. I live just north of Miami, and while we get a lot of sun here, it's nowhere near what it is in the desert southwest. Also, we have a problem here with tropical storms and debris. Keeping the roof intact is difficult enough without having to worry about an expensive system on top of it. I'd much rather pay taxes to subsidize modernizing the electric companies the way we do in FL. Florida Power & Light is among the most efficient electrical utilities in the country. Through modernization and centralized solar utilization my electric bill seems to go down every year. I'm content with that.

Anyway, LM1's point wasn't that we shouldn't do things that are protective for the planet. The point of her posts was that what the, so called, scientists and snowflakes are suggesting won't do jack shit. Correcting a non-problem, which is what the CO2 situation is, will just increase the tax burden for everyday people with no conceivable benefit in return. There is nothing (or, at least, very little) anthropogenic about climate warming, and the warming that humans account for amounts to little more than slight perturbations of natural warming and cooling cycles.

 

What do they call those people who stock up? Preppers I think, I use to laugh at them but I am begining to change my mind.

 

Bravo and bloody hell - now that's the good old American spirit !

And there are lots of us up here, by the way, who are looking forward to when you get it back ! After all, you built it in the first place - so you can build it again.

But if you really insist upon having something to worry about, why not something real ...

How about that asteroid that one day IS going to hit us ... not If, but When ? Now that'll bring some real climate change down on us real quick ! ( Say, we've got this really cool 'Canadarm' robotic space arm here that might help. And a little-known fact - yours truly personally designed it. )

Or, how about that monster solar flare that one day IS going to erupt out of the Sun - and then about eight minutes later, there go our communications. There are real issues out there which will have real consequences for the World.

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We don't know it but I bet the government has some kind of satilight with a laser beam to destroy them. We also won't ever be told if the do or not either. They are sending to much stuff up in space and I am betting at least 50% of it has to do with the DOD. But we will never know unless we are here when it happens.

 

Between 1880 and 2009, the global sea level rose less than 9 inches (22.5 cm). The Maunder Minimum was about over by that time, so all of that 9 inches occurred during the warmest of the last 200 years. So, Neophyte, the chances of global sea level rising another inch in any of our lifetimes is probably more remote than even what you specified.

 

I can't say how I know, Allison, but you are very close in this assumption.

 

Thanks. I just feel they are not sending stuff up that they are telling us they are sending. Someday I feel there will be a war about space because nobody owns it like we do our Countries. Anyone can do anything anywhere in space because nobody has a right to a certain point. I think the next war will be from satellites and you better keep some matches handy because we all will be starting over from the dark age. They will all take out the power grids. Just my opinion.

 

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Apparently two of the World's Greatest Minds are presently at work on this very problem ...

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I thought Obama was a beer guy.

 

I am a fact based person, in regards to climate change and our planet. I start with actual data. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/climate-information/analyses/monthly-global-climate-reports