Sunday, May 1

More Of That "Man Causing Global Warming" Nonsense

Responsible, professional scientists without political bias and prejudice agree that global warming happens but disagree that man is the cause of it. Quite a few produce true scientific evidence saying that warming is not a significant issue at all. Some responsible scientific information is available HERE.

For a while the issue has lain fairly quietly in the political background but here it comes again, published by that joke in the scientific community, Science Magazine.

James Hansen's latest study ( Global Warming Continues
J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo Science 11 January 2002; 295: 275 [DOI: 10.1126/science.295.5553.275c) has been termed a "smoking gun" that proves humans are causing global warming. In fact it is nothing more that a typical Hansen modeling exercise, the kind he has been trumpeting since the 1980s.

Here's how this one goes, in 7 easy steps.

1.Take some very shaky evidence and a draw firm conclusion. In this case that the oceans are warming. We don't actually know this, certainly not how much, if any.

2. Assume all else in nature is constant. In this case Hansen assumes that solar input is constant, even though solar variability is the hottest thing in climate science today. This assumption made some sense in 1986, it makes none today.

3. Derive a precise value for what is actually unknown. In this case the Earth's heat balance. We have no way of measuring the Earth's heat balance.

4. Demonstrate that the GHG model can be made to reproduce this value. The GHG model can be made to reproduce just about any value as long as it is part of a warming trend. Feedbacks make it very flexible.

5. Conclude that the GHG model is proven. All other possible explanations for this actually unknown value having been ruled out by assumption, see above.

6. Use the proven model to predict the future. It is bad. The heat comes out of the ocean (one wonders why it changes direction). Ice melts.

7. Sound the alarm. Again.

In point of fact the hypothesis that solar variability is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG hypothesis does not do this.


Global warming has been trumpeted as a hot political issue for years. The closest the mainstream media has come to telling the public both sides of the story has been an occasional offhand reference to "dissenting scientists" without presenting the dissention.

If you're interested in the truth about global warming, do the research. Don't depend on the media -- they don't bother with unbiased research; do it yourself. It's a important issue; one that will cost you a lot of money if you don't know who's telling the truth.

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