The Times of London has just published an article which purports to report on proof that man is the only possible cause of global warming. As they put it, "All the potential culprits have been ruled out except one." This assertion flies in the face of reason. There are many known causes, mostly natural, and all working in concert, that cause both global warming and global cooling.
The scientists claim that they have created a model for what they think might occur if there was global warming that was caused by greenhouse gasses. What they claim is proof that their model is accurate, is that their model matches a computer model very closely.
There are a couple of problems with this approach. First, most known sources of so-called greenhouse gasses are natural. Carbon dioxide, a major focus of the Kyoto treaty, is a minor, naturally occurring greenhouse gas that is essential for life on Earth. The most prevalent greenhouse gas of all is water vapor (National Center for Public Policy Research).
The second problem is that their proof is based on a computer model. Computer models are not even close to being able to predict the weather just a few days in advance, much less 50 to 100 years out. Computer models of global warming are known to vary by as much as 400% in their predictions. Given this wide variety of models to choose from, it's hardly a surprise that they could come up with a close match. It means nothing. If they can come up with a model that can tell me, accurately every time, what the weather will be like on a given day two months from now, I'll sit up and pay attention. Until then there is nothing to talk about. Computers are just calculators; models are just math; no one has a computation that is large enough, nor anywhere near complex enough to describe, much less predict, the climate of the Earth. Anyone who says they can, is lying.
There is one more problem that I wanted to bring up. It hasn't got anything to do with the reliability of their claims, but rather with the way they are approaching the release of their "new discovery."
The Times
Dr Barnett said the results, which are about to be submitted for publication in a major peer-reviewed journal, should put further pressure on the Bush Administration to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, which came into force on Wednesday.
Their results "are about to be submitted for publication in a major peer-reviewed journal." In other words, the results have not yet been subjected to peer review. No one has verified their results independently; no one has looked at their calculations; this "information" is not ready for release under standard scientific protocols.
I have a question, but no answer: Why would they release their discovery without peer-review? This seems to be a growing trend in the world of Global warming "science." Both Science and Nature, major peer-review journals, have recently published climate research that has not been fully peer-reviewed. Nature even posted this article in discussing the publishing of un-reviewed "science" on the popular global warming advocacy website, RealClimate.
But some sound a note of caution. They say that the site risks presenting a "party line" on climate science that could be seen as attempting to limit debate. The site's critics also fear that, by rushing out responses rather than going throughpeer review, the site blurs the line between science and advocacy.
Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York who helped to launch the site, concedes that it is "in some senses" a vehicle for advocacy, rather thanscience. But he says it is needed to counter pressure groups funded by the US energy industry that deny that global warming is happening and is being caused by greenhouse-gas emissions. Such groups are "truly abusing scientific results", according to Schmidt.
Some of the researchers who agree with Schmidt's observation are not sure that projects such as RealClimate are the best response. "You could get the same names criticizing every time," warns Mick Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research based in Norwich, UK. "That would give the impression that there is a party line."
Critics also suggest that the project may struggle to accommodate respected climate scientists who dissent from aspects of mainstream thinking on climate change. One researcher mentioned in this regard was Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who has questioned the current scientific consensus over the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on climate. The possibility of posting his views seems to divide the RealClimate team. Schmidt said he was unsure whether Lindzen would be allowed to post, but Bradley said that he should be.
And Rowan Sutton, a climate modeller at the University of Reading, UK, points out that conventional peer review is incompatible with the site's need for rapid response. "It's a dilemma for them," he says. Schmidt counters that postings are not academic papers and so do not need fullpeer review . Comments are instead e-mailed to researchers contributing to the site, and their suggestions are incorporated before the piece is uploaded.
In the short term, simply keeping the site up and running is the team's greatest concern. Schmidt says they are getting more external comments than they had expected and have already had to relax the rules on how such material is vetted before being added to the site.
Whether or not global warming is occurring is unknown. If it is happening, whether the blame for it can be layed on man is an even greater unknown using currently available methods; we are a long way from having methods adequate for the task.
Let me put it more directly: global warming may or may not be happening--anyone who tells you that they know for certain, one way or the other, is lying to you. The best, most accurate statement that can be made about global warming is, "we don't know, and we don't have any way to tell--the world is too big."
Given that we don't know whether global warming is even occurring -- and if it is occurring, what is causing it -- committing billions of dollars and man hours as numerous as the stars to the Kyoto treaty is a big risk. As the Wall Street Journal says in an unsigned editorial today, "But
the important point is this: The world is being lobbied to place a huge
economic bet--as much as $150 billion a year--on the notion that
man-made global warming is real. Businesses are gearing up, at
considerable cost, to deal with a new regulatory environment; complex
carbon-trading schemes are in the making. Shouldn't everyone look very
carefully, and honestly, at the science before we jump off this
particular cliff?"
