Global warming is an example of what I call consensus science. That is, it is science theory that has become so embedded in the body scientific that counter claims are required to live by Thompson’s law:
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
Recent stories have suggested that perhaps this is good time to review the bidding on the global warming debate.
- “Believing in global warming” vs. “science”.
- What’s Thompson’s law mean for the scientist trying to get funding?
- The difference between causality and correlation. Is the arrow pointing the wrong direction?
- Politics and science, no better than Church and science. Where is our Galileo?
- What about Mars?
- What about the Coming Ice Age?
We’ll be tipping back a few brews, tipping over a few sacred cows and looking for the new tipping point as we talk about this one, next, at the Contented Cow.
Legal details in appropriately tiny font:
- What: Politics and a Pint
- When: 6-7:30PM, 14 Dec 2008
- Where: Contented Cow, Northfield, MN
References:
- Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, (unreviewed) American Physical Society: Physics
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:
- Radiative forcing F;
- The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter K; and
- The feedback multiplier f.
Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.
- Earth may face freeze worse than Ice Age: study, Scientific American http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=earth-may-face-freeze-wor
The planet could face a freeze worse than an Ice Age starting in as little as 10,000 years, giving future societies a headache the opposite of coping with global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.
- Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says, National Geographic, Feb 2007.
[Hint: Try this on for size: Google "mars global warming"]