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Thomas Kuhn's great work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions famously explains how one scientific paradigm replaces another, changing our view of the world and leading on to further scientific advances. An existing, dominant paradigm is ripe for replacement when its explanatory power is decreasingly able to provide plausible answers to important questions. Such is the case now with the paradigm built around the concept of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). In attempts to bolster it here have been so many excuses, fixes and reinterpretations of data that AGW's critics have dubbed our current era the "Adjustocene." Here is a brief but telling critique that shows the weakening of the AGW paradigm.
Alarmism / Climate News / Opinion
What are, in fact, the grounds for concern about global warming?
By Javier This is an answer to the Geological Society of London position statement on “Climate Change: evidence from the geological record,” published in November 2010, and the addendum published in December 2013. They can be found at: https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climaterecordThis article was first written as a long comment contributing to a discussion over the Geological…
. . . Physics shows that adding carbon dioxide leads to warming under laboratory conditions. It is generally assumed that a doubling of CO2 should produce a direct forcing of 3.7 W/m2[1], that translates to a warming of 1°C (by differentiating the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) to 1.2°C (by models taking into account latitude and season). But that is a maximum value valid only if total energy outflow is the same as radiative outflow. As there is also conduction, convection, and evaporation, the final warming without feedbacks is probably less. Then we have the problem of feedbacks that we don’t know and cannot properly measure. For some of the feedbacks, like cloud cover we don’t even know the sign of their contribution. And they are huge, a 1% change in albedo has a radiative effect of 3.4 W/m2 [2], almost equivalent to a full doubling of CO2.
So, in essence we don’t know how much the Earth has warmed in response to the increase in CO2 for the past 67 years, and how much for other causes. That is the reason why, after expending billions on the question of climate sensitivity to CO2, we have not been able to reduce the range of possible values, 1.5°C to 4.5° C[3], a factor of 3, in the 39 years that have passed since the Charney Report was published [4]. A clear scientific failure.
Climate is a very complex system and adding CO2 to the atmosphere in great amounts since 1950 led first to cooling, then to warming, and lately to a stilling of temperatures until the 2014-16 El Niño. A different explanation is required for every period when the expected warming doesn’t take place, an approach that leaves Occam’s beard unshaved. . . .
Alarmism / Climate News / Opinion
What are, in fact, the grounds for concern about global warming?
By Javier This is an answer to the Geological Society of London position statement on “Climate Change: evidence from the geological record,” published in November 2010, and the addendum published in December 2013. They can be found at: https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climaterecordThis article was first written as a long comment contributing to a discussion over the Geological…
. . . Physics shows that adding carbon dioxide leads to warming under laboratory conditions. It is generally assumed that a doubling of CO2 should produce a direct forcing of 3.7 W/m2[1], that translates to a warming of 1°C (by differentiating the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) to 1.2°C (by models taking into account latitude and season). But that is a maximum value valid only if total energy outflow is the same as radiative outflow. As there is also conduction, convection, and evaporation, the final warming without feedbacks is probably less. Then we have the problem of feedbacks that we don’t know and cannot properly measure. For some of the feedbacks, like cloud cover we don’t even know the sign of their contribution. And they are huge, a 1% change in albedo has a radiative effect of 3.4 W/m2 [2], almost equivalent to a full doubling of CO2.
So, in essence we don’t know how much the Earth has warmed in response to the increase in CO2 for the past 67 years, and how much for other causes. That is the reason why, after expending billions on the question of climate sensitivity to CO2, we have not been able to reduce the range of possible values, 1.5°C to 4.5° C[3], a factor of 3, in the 39 years that have passed since the Charney Report was published [4]. A clear scientific failure.
Climate is a very complex system and adding CO2 to the atmosphere in great amounts since 1950 led first to cooling, then to warming, and lately to a stilling of temperatures until the 2014-16 El Niño. A different explanation is required for every period when the expected warming doesn’t take place, an approach that leaves Occam’s beard unshaved. . . .