Have mathematical models replaced good old-fashioned scientific testing? An understanding of the big picture in a field of study helps to frame and give essential perspective to that field. Take the field of natural science for instance. A big-picture look at the overall operation of the natural science profession has traditionally been seen in the “scientific method,” which consists of observation, hypothesis and testing. Rigorous testing of a hypothesis eventually leads to a … [Read more...]
How Do Hard Data and Computer Climate Models’ Dire Predictions Compare?
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman explained “the key to science” this way: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is … [Read more...]
Endless Winter in the Era of Climate Crusade: A Wakeup Call
On every Earth Day coming, attention around the world turns to environmental issues. None is more famous — or infamous — than climate change. The winter of 2017–2018 has stirred debate about global warming. Some say the long, cold winter should quell climate alarmism. Others use it as evidence for extreme manmade warming. Who’s right? An Inconvenient Winter Temperatures plummeted way below normal across the Northern Hemisphere this winter. Many cities in Canada, America, England, and Europe … [Read more...]
After 20 Years, No New Global Temperature Record
[The article below by Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Dr. Roy W. Spencer, reprinted from his blog by permission, reports that the linear warming trend from 1970--2017 was 0.13 deg. C per decade. The computer climate models on which the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the negotiators of the 2015 Paris climate agreement rely simulate a warming trend of 0.216 deg. C per decade, i.e., two-thirds faster than actually measured, and that … [Read more...]
Cracks in the Empire’s Armor Appear
Yesterday brought widespread news coverage of a new “study” published in Nature Geoscience which concludes that global warming has not been progressing as fast as expected, and that climate models might be a “little bit” wrong. (That the “little bit” is a factor of 2 or 3 is a fine point upon which we won’t quibble here.) I’m still trying to process my feelings about how the two authors, Myles Allen and Michael Grubb, might have been allowed to wander so far off the Empire’s (UN IPCC’s) … [Read more...]
Why Are Older Scientists More Likely to Doubt Climate Alarmism?
Back in 1984, Richard Lamm, then Democratic Governor of Colorado, gained infamy for having said the terminally ill elderly have "a duty to die and get out of the way." Such disrespect for age persists among Progressives. Bill Nye "the Science Guy," a major proponent of global warming alarmism, blames climate skepticism on age. "Climate change deniers, by way of example, are older. It's generational," Nye told the Los Angeles Times, adding, "We're just going to have to wait for those people … [Read more...]
Exiting the Paris Climate Agreement
Scant evidence of expected benefit means Scott Pruitt is right Washington Times, Monday, April 17, 2017 Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt appeared on “Fox & Friends” April 13 and said, “Paris is something we really need to look at closely, because it’s something we need to exit, in my opinion.” Why? “It’s a bad deal for America. China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030, we front-loaded all of our costs, at the expense of … [Read more...]
Judith Curry confirms: climate models can’t justify policy—ANY policy
For years we at the Cornwall Alliance have been saying that the disagreement between model predictions (or projections or simulations, call them what you will) of global temperatures and real-world observations means the models are invalidated and therefore provide no rational basis for predictions of future temperature and therefore no rational basis for policies meant to respond to such predictions. Now one of the world's leading climatologists, recently retired Professor Judith Curry, Chair … [Read more...]
Climate Models: Uncertain? Inaccurate? What’s the Difference? Why Does it Matter?
For years I have been pointing out that the super-sophisticated computer climate models on which the IPCC, national environment agencies, national academies of science, and of course the many climate-alarmist advocacy groups and journalists depend for their predictions of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) predict, on average, 2 to 3 times the warming actually observed over the relevant periods; that they failed to predict the complete lack of statistically significant … [Read more...]
How Theology Can, and Should, Contribute to Scientific and Public Discourse about Anthropogenic Global Warming
A paper presented to the Round Table on Theology, Climate Change, and Politics, University of Western Ontario, May 29, 2012 Paleoanthropologist and philosopher Loren Eiseley (1907–1977), who though religious in the tradition of American Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau was certainly no orthodox Christian theist, on reflecting on the kind of soil in which science could flourish, wrote, “In one of those strange permutations of which history yields … [Read more...]
