Global warming is probably not our fault!

I was watching a South Park episode when I heard something about global warming and the green house effect that got me into serious thinking... I paused the episode and googled "no proof of global warming" and this is what I found (just some of the most important parts,for the rest just click here ):

What do the global warming crowd believe?

The global warming folks think that the man's output of CO₂ is causing the climate to grow significantly warmer due to a ill named "green-house" effect. (The glass in a green-house prevents convection -- obviously CO₂ does not limit convection and its effect on global temperature should go by a different name.) This warming is referred to as AGW(Anthropogenic Global Warming). The word 'anthropogenic' meaning 'caused by man'. The warmers think that the slight warming seen in lower troposphere satellite data above is in error and problematic ground station temperature measurements that show a slightly larger warming trend is caused almost entirely by a slight elevation in CO₂ levels. The warmers state that solar effects are insignificant.

Is Global warming a scientific theory or a belief?

There are many claiming to be "climate scientists". What does it mean to be a scientist? I think it is agreed that it takes more than a college degree, lab coat, and computer to be a real scientist. Science requires experimental controls - something not found in the statistics about an open system with confounding variables. There is no doubt that increasing the opacity of the air by the added CO₂ causes an increase in global temperature. There is also no doubt that changes in solar radiation changes global temperature. The question is if the amount of increase contributed by man's emissions of CO ₂ is significant compared to changes due to the sum of the confounding variables (see list below).

I remember reading a news article when I was in 5th or 6th grade by "scientists" that predicted that we were going into a new ice age because of man made pollution. Here is a later one. I thought it was true and worried about it for years. I followed every global climate article I got my hands on, until I realized they didn't have any way to truly support the claims they were making. Some of these same people are in the global warming business now.

Supporters of global warming will say, "I've known of hundreds of scientists with diverse political backgrounds (from all over the world) who have come to the same conclusion", but taking polls on the opinion of people whose income is tied to the existence of a problem is not science. A poll of PC (Politically Correct) scientists from the year 1400 would have put the earth rather than the sun at the center of our solar system. While there are quite a few PC scientists today claiming to "know" that man is causing global warming, there are other scientists that honestly and humbly disagree.

A politically popular opinion doesn't make it correct. No poll of scientists has anything to do with science. Science is not a democratic process!

Supporters will further say, "Many of these scientists are established, world-renowned, tenured professors who do research in numerous areas and whose jobs are certainly not dependent on the existence of global warming".

But let us consider the peers of Copernicus; did their being "established, world-renowned, tenured professors" make them right? Would publication of balanced humble papers without dire conclusions effect the issuance of research grants? This link may be over hyped, but his detractors can only rebut with ad hominem attacks as he points out the difference between a scientific forecast and forecasts by scientists.

What is an Open System?

In real science, everything that can possibly be done to eliminate confounding causes are eliminated. The earth's atmosphere is an open system - no one knows with any certainty the amount of materials emitted by the earth or even additions from outer space. An open system is one where we can not control for confounding variables.

What good are the Collected Statistics?

Statistics often provides a scientist a good idea for a hypothesis, but statistical correlations do not prove cause and effect. A meaningful correlation has to be more than just two variables trending in the same direction. News reports about science often confuse correlation with cause and effect. The news media acts as if 'correlation' is proof of causality, to the confusion of the lay public. There is especially much muddled thinking in climate news reporting where we are talking about a simple trend with many confounding variables..

"There are four kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics, and computer models"

Climate science is often reported as if a 'run' of a computer model is an experiment (it is not!). A computer model can not discriminate theories into true and false because it is not measuring reality. (Such models may give one an idea where to experiment, but to claim they "prove" anything is pure fiction and should lead one to discount the source. At best you can use a computer model to disprove a theory.)

To infer a connection between man emissions of CO₂ and warming is not an easy jump for the scientifically minded

• First, you have to prove that the increase in CO₂ is caused by humans - the venting of CO₂ by volcanoes (including those under the ocean) and geysers and other natural sources (and also the natural absorption or sinking of CO₂) is a estimate that defies error analysis. To what error band are we certain of the amount of emission of CO2 by natural causes?
• Second, the elevation of CO₂ needs to be shown to be historically real, but there were no analytical tools to measure even crudely thousands of years ago - the best work has been done with ice samples, but there is a great problem with how to calibrate such measurements. What size should the error bands be? I believe that man is responsible for a small increase in CO₂ - this is supported by a lot of historical data.
• Third, there has to be a hypothesis that can predict the past (only then can we start guessing about the future) including the temperatures in the upper atmosphere. Any model that can't fit past data has to be called wrong.
• Fourth, as this is an open system where we can't build several earths and vary only one constant, any conclusion at best is still just a theory - a educated guess - it is not scientific fact. Science is more than looking scientific; just because things are measured to several decimal points means naught when there is no control or false logic.
• Fifth, to look at the past temperatures honestly, one would have to show no past periods of higher temperature. The idea that we 'know' the inferred data - is simply wrong. We only have accurate records of solar output from the recent past and we are ignorant of the magnitude of long term historic variations that are possible. Explaining the small drift (less than what appears to be the noise in the system) can be accomplished with confounding variables. It might help to remember that 10,000 years ago Milwaukee was under 40' of ice, so we really do know that temperature can vary on its own. See http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/space_weather/ We also have reason to believe that glaciers world wide have been shrinking for the last 300 years - this means that things other than CO₂ change our climate.
• Solar output has been shown as a link in weather.
  
  Also see a rigorous paper that clearly links changes in climate to sunspot activity : Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development
• Six, one really has to subtract the effects of variations of solar output, and changes in land use (irrigation) from any temperature trends. There is no way to do this with any meaningful accuracy.

Confounding Variables

Real science spends lots of time getting rid of or correcting for confounding variables. Confounding variables is THE reason that we can not 'know' that man produced CO₂ is driving climate change. (It is also the same reason we don't 'know' the opposite.)

The following list of confounding variables is a work in progress - at the rate that new ones are added it is quite likely that there are other climate drivers that have not yet been identified.

• Irrigation (Why is so little in the press about irrigations effect on climate?)(There is no occurrence of the word irrigation in Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers and only a few references in the full report - often expressing it as unknowable.)(The argument that the water vapor is only in the air for about a week is strange as some of the water re-evaporate as it hits the ground. There is also the fact that aquifers levels and river flows into the ocean really have gone down. Almost all of the Colorado river flow of 100 years ago now travels over the USA as water vapor.)
• Changes in solar output in the IR and visible spectrum space_weather (short term variations seem too small a factor on their own)
• Changes in shielding of cosmic radiation from the sun due to changes in magnetic storms (provides nucleation sites for condensation of water vapor)
• Changes in plant coverage (deforestation etc)
• The Milankovitch cycles; changes in earth's eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession over time. The way the earth orbits around the sun can create ice ages and warming periods. You might want to look at the wikipedia article and pay attention to the problems section.
• Ground level Ozone
• Changes in particles that come from the sun.
• Genetic changes in ocean algae over time
• Changes in earths magnetic field.
• Changes in volcanic emissions (CO2 and other substances)
• Changes in the amount and elevation of pollution particulate (provides nucleation sites for precipitation)
• Changes in CO2 absorption and emission due to changes in plant coverage and ocean temperature.
• Changes in ozone thickness (secondary to solar cycles?)
• Changes in methane emission by plants (genetic evolutionary driven changes).
• Changes in ocean salinity due to water use - (causing changes in ocean currents).
• Changes in land reflectivity
• Snowballs from space (an open system - and there is debate if these snowballs are only a sensor artifact - such material would introduce water vapor and nucleation sites at an unknown rate with unknown changes over time )
• Changes in ice crystal reflectivity due to the temperature, water saturation, mineral content and wind speed when they are formed.

(for the whole article, which is truly fascinating please click here)



Suddenly I feel really stupid.All these years I've been taught and what's more, I've been teaching about the harmful human effect on the planet's temperature without actually verifying it myself.I've been led to believe in theories claiming to be facts, not actual facts. If it weren't for South Park I would probably have never found out about it. Needless to say, I feel more than obliged to inform as many people as I can.