Tag: climate

No less a person than the former American President Barak Obama informed the world in 2014, “The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.” Some sceptics responded to this assertion by claiming that science is never settled; science is a process that continuously evolves, not a set of facts cast in stone. But Obama essentially dismissed this point of view when he said “We don’t have time for a meeting of The Flat Earth Society”.

Is it possible to reconcile these two points of view? If science is never settled how can we use it to formulate a course of action? If new information might change our view tomorrow how are we to make any plans on the basis of current knowledge? This sounds like a council of despair and an excuse to do nothing.

From a strictly objective point of view the sceptics are right – it is always possible that new data might disprove the incumbent theory. Take my own field of geology. When I was a child, students of geology were taught that the Earth’s crust was rigid and that the positions of the continents were fixed. Years later, when I studied geology at university these former students became my teachers. By then the plate tectonic revolution had swept through and I was taught that these formerly fixed continents were now free to drift across the globe, colliding and separating one from the other. It is difficult to imagine two more different views of the same Earth.

How could such a mistaken model for the Earth’s crust hold sway? (I can almost hear President Eisenhower tell the world in 1956 “The Science is settled. Fixed continents are a fact”.) There was no lack of evidence that ‘continental drift’, as it was then called, might be possible. The German scientific polymath Alfred Wegener had proposed as early as 1912 that the Atlantic Ocean had been created by the separation of America from Europe and Africa. Over the next half century geologists amassed substantial evidence from across the globe that supported the theory of mobile continents. The jigsaw like fit of South America with Africa was the iconic example but many other lines of evidence pointed in the same direction: terrestrial animals such as marsupials, and even earthworms are today found in continents far distant from each other; glacial rocks occur in what are now tropical locations; and tropical species such as crocodiles have been found in sediments in the high Arctic. How did they all get there?

All this evidence, though, failed to undermine the implacable resistance of the geophysicists, led by Harold Jeffreys of Cambridge University. Jeffreys dismissed the evidence by demonstrating mathematically, at least to his own satisfaction, that the Earth’s crust was too rigid to allow any significant lateral movement. Many geologists accepted the geophysical arguments and so had to explain away the geological ‘evidence’. ‘Land Bridges’ were a favourite to account for the presence of similar animals on widely separated continents – they were still teaching about these when I was an undergraduate in the mid-70’s! The fit of Africa and South America was dismissed as coincidental, and anyway not that good.

It turned out, of course, that the geological evidence was largely correct and Jeffrey’s objections were mistaken. But the plate tectonic paradigm did not triumph on the basis of the geological evidence. Only when new types of data were brought to bear – especially the discovery of magnetic stripes in oceanic crust and of geophysical ‘low velocity zones’ deep in the Earth’s crust – was the old geological evidence reinterpreted in terms of mobile continents.

The American historian of science Thomas Kuhn proposed in his book ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ that science at any one time tends to be governed by a ruling ‘paradigm’. The paradigm defines the problems that can be studied and is not generally subject to investigation itself. Results that fail to conform to the paradigm rarely lead immediately to its overthrow; they can be explained away as experimental error, or sub-theories may be constructed to protect the paradigm from refutation. However eventually so many anomalies may arise that the paradigm itself is called into question.

This seems to me a pretty good explanation of how the plate tectonic revolution came about.

Does it have any relevance for modern climate science? There is little doubt that the science today operates within a clearly identifiable paradigm – let’s call it the greenhouse gas theory. This theory maintains that global warming today is caused by the increase of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases (GHG’s) that are accumulating in the atmosphere as a result of human activities. Climate scientists, along with Barak Obama, are certain that the paradigm is correct. Moreover, scientists who do not buy in to this paradigm are effectively excluded from working on climate. Is this wise?

Before looking deeper into that issue, let’s consider science and certainty a little further. There are, surely epistemological grounds for claiming that nothing in science can be regarded as a fact. But as I noted earlier, this stance is not very helpful in the real world; if we waited for certainty we would never do anything. In practice most scientists subconsciously subscribe to some version of the celebrated biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s definition: 

“In science ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent’. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.”

Does this help? I think it at least allows us to do away with some spurious objections. The example of apples rising rather than, as Newton observed, falling is more useful than abstract statements about settled or non-settled science. We would all agree that flat-earthism is as ridiculous as rising apples. But is Obama justified in using this analogy to dismiss climate sceptics? I’m not so sure.

The argument is not that greenhouse gas theory is wrong; in terms of Gould’s definition I would say that it is a fact. We would not be here to discuss all this if GHG’s were absent from the atmosphere. But it is not as simple as that. To return to the plate tectonic analogy, Jeffreys was correct in his assertion that continental crust could not just plough its way through the oceans. However, neither he, nor anybody else at the time, knew that deep below the crust very different rocks existed that could ‘flow’ extremely slowly and thus carry the upper crustal rocks passively along. The devil is in the detail.

Why might anthropomorphic GHG theory provide an incomplete explanation of current global warming? There are several reasons. An obvious one is that much greater climatic changes have occurred in geologically recent times without man’s influence. Only fifteen thousand years ago the place where I am writing this was uninhabitable because large parts of the Northern Hemisphere were covered in ice. Those ice sheets advanced and receded multiple time in the past two million years as temperature oscillated from cold to warm and back. Scientists have uncovered good circumstantial evidence to relate these changes to so-called ‘Milankovitch Cycles’ – changes in insolation caused by cyclic variations in the Earth’s orbit. But the variation in insolation seems tiny in comparison to the profound changes to the Earth’s climate. Terrestrial factors must amplify the solar signal somehow. Climate scientists have argued that CO₂ is the amplifier and thus GHG can account for the ice ages. But others think convincing proof is lacking and other factors are likely to be involved. At the present time this debate is unresolved.

Many climate scientists argue that these ice age cycles are not relevant to the current situation. They claim that since the ice sheets receded from Eurasia and North America (ca 15-10 thousand years ago) climatic variation has been minimal. Therefore, in the jargon, the current temperature increase is portrayed as ‘unprecedented’. This was spectacularly illustrated some 25 years ago when Michael Mann and colleagues produced the first version of what became known as the ‘Hockey Stick’, the graph that featured as poster-child for the IPCC’s 3rd Assessment Report in 2001. The hockey stick portrayed global temperatures as essentially static, or falling slightly over the past 2000 years before a dramatic rise coinciding with 20^th Century industrial development.

But the validity of the Hockey Stick reconstruction immediately caused controversy and the argument has hardly abated over the last 25 years. Suffice it to say that despite numerous accusations of poor quality, cherry-picked data and dubious statistics the climate establishment has clung tenaciously to this icon of man-made climate change. It is hard not to see this as ideological commitment to the GHG paradigm. Even the IPCC found it expedient to play down Hockey Stick in later assessment reports.

Prior to the Hockey Stick, earlier workers had identified plentiful variation in historic climate data. Terms such as The Little Ice Age, The Medieval Warm Period or The Roman Warm Period all suggested perceptible climate change during the past 2000 years. But when considered through the prism of the GHG paradigm these all, conveniently, started to fade away. Could it really be that generations of previous researchers were mistaken? To be sure some limited, local change is still allowed, but global climate change it is not.

On a longer time-scale, climate reconstructions once spoke of a post-glacial climate optimum some 8-10,000 years ago (The Holocene Climatic Optimum in the jargon). This too is being called into question because again it cannot be accommodated by the GHG narrative.

Perhaps the current climate warriors are right. New and better data often lead to adjustments to old interpretations. But it is hard not to conclude that the questions being asked are indeed framed by the GHG paradigm. And since most researchers in government labs or university departments have to buy into the paradigm it is hard to see them publishing results that will challenge it. All the more so as western governments are committed to vast expenditure on the basis that the GHG theory is fact. Who is going to tell them that it might all be a terrible mistake?

It might be useful to make another diversion into facts and their place in this discussion. Charles Darwin famously wrote that

“False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed…”

The argument over the Hockey Stick is, in part, about false facts. The Hockey Stick was constructed by combining a large number of proxy data-sets, mainly tree rings, into a statistical model. Critics have argued that much of this data is invalid for a variety of reasons. Some proxies respond to factors other than temperature, such as increased CO₂. Some are of dubious quality in that the match to temperature data over a ‘control period’ is poor. Yet others come from sites where alternative tree ring data-sets conflict with those chosen. So the ‘facts’ that have been modelled to produce the Hockey Stick are not unambiguous. Other researchers could have chosen different data sets and reached different conclusions.

Proponents of the Hockey Stick argue that independent reconstructions have validated it time and again. But critics point out that many of the same data sets appear repeatedly in these reconstructions, so they are not really independent at all. I would argue vehemently that this is not simply cavilling by naysayers determined to sabotage GHG theory on behalf of supposedly ‘vested interests’ such as the fossil fuel companies. In fact this debate went all the way to the US Senate in 2006. Both critics and proponents claimed victory in that hearing but the views of Ed Wegman, an eminent statistician, who was involved in the inquiry are worth noting. He concluded, inter alia, that

“In general we found MBH98 and MBH99 [the original Hockey Stick papers] to be somewhat obscure and the criticisms of [McIntyre and McKitrick] (two researchers who questioned the Hockey Stick) to be valid and compelling.” He also observed that 

“this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility.”

Hardly a ringing endorsement. I don’t recall the US Government ever being asked to settle a debate with the Flat Earth Society. One does not need to agree with Wegman to appreciate that some aspects of climate science may be less certain than their adherents proclaim.  

The rejection of any significant fluctuations in temperature in the post-glacial period is all the more remarkable when one considers the modern data, including that from satellites and weather balloons. In 1998, 2016 and now in 2023/2024, for example, global temperature change of around 1^oC occurred within the space of a year. These rapid temperature changes are thought to be caused by the El Niño/La Niña cycles in the Pacific Ocean. The current climate change shibboleth is that we must at all costs avoid an increase in temperature of 1.5^oC above pre-industrial. Yet natural change is capable of producing two thirds of this increase in the blink of an eye. There are other natural factors that could produce temperature changes on longer time-frames. Ocean current systems such as the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation, for example, cycle through warm and cool periods over periods of half a century or more and can have a significant impact on climate.

The existence of these natural factors need not invalidate GHG theory. In fact if natural factors that cool the planet are currently counteracting the rise in temperature caused by GHG’s then the climate crisis might be even worse than we suspect. Surely it is worth trying to find out.

So is President Obama right to say that the science is settled? I leave that for the reader to decide. But I can’t help recalling the possibly apocryphal quote, to the effect that climate scientists blame it all on GHG’s because they cannot think what else it might be. That in turn brings to mind the tortuous words of another American politician:

“There are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the things we do not know we don’t know.” 

Scientists should be humble in the face of nature’s complexity. Only if you keep an open mind are you likely to encounter unknown unknowns.

We’re Doomed – Private Frazer, Dad’s Army 

How do you go about persuading the public that the Earth is flat? That would seem to be the task that Martin Durkin set himself in his new film ‘Climate The Movie’. Dismissing the so-called consensus on climate change, Durkin argues that the ‘science’ is rotten to the core and is sustained only by marginalising dissenters before their views can be properly considered. Why? – because climate science has become the ultimate gravy train and too many vested interests have climbed aboard to allow it to be derailed.

Durkin argues that most of the evidence for climate change fueled by carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases (GHG’s) is bogus and sustained by manipulated data and dubious statistics. Whether it be historic temperature records, environmental impact studies or the climate models, Durkin finds shoddy science everywhere.

The virtually insuperable problem for the sceptic is that climate change seems to be supported by such a vast array of evidence that most laymen assume that it cannot all be false. And whilst there are no doubt opportunists taking advantage of the ‘crisis’ it presents, surely not everyone can be in on the scam?

Durkin’s answer to this is that the science was initially warped by a coterie of well-placed activists who produced alarming results on the basis of poor or corrupted data sets. These results were quickly picked up by science journalists and the mainstream media (MSM). Before long environmental activists and ambitious politicians saw that the threat of global warming could be used to advance their own agendas. So climate change was soon repackaged as an existential crisis – and to question it was not only unscientific but immoral. With the external world suitably panicked, alarmist academics were then able to exert pressure to ensure that studies that challenged the global warming narrative were suppressed.  The path was then clear for profound changes to our way of life, all justified by the need to save the planet.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that Durkin is right. How could you convince a sceptical audience of your case? You might begin by questioning the data on which the alarmist case rests. Is it fit for purpose? Has it been compromised or manipulated in any way? You could examine the claims for environmental breakdown that climate change is said to be producing, such as increased incidence of hurricanes or wild-fires. You might even question the underlying theory – are there other explanations for the phenomena we observe? Durkin takes a stab at most of this with the help of a number of experts who reject the so-called consensus on climate change. Does he make a convincing case?

Durkin’s Criticisms – Science & Data

Durkin starts his critique by reviewing the climate history of the planet over the last 500 million years. Several experts are brought in to argue that current temperatures are atypical not in being too hot but in being far cooler than the long-term average. We are currently living through an ice age with ice caps at both poles. Only a couple of other periods in the far distant past are at all comparable. Not only was the planet much warmer for most of its history, life thrived because a combination of higher temperatures and higher CO₂ produced optimum conditions for plants and animals. In contrast the current ice age with its depleted CO₂ levels supports a comparatively impoverished biota.

Turning to the modern era, Durkin then takes aim at the global temperature record as measured by ground-based thermometers. Before the recent advent of climate alarmism thermometers were not positioned to provide input to global temperature calculations; they were intended for immediate use by local communities. As such they were installed at convenient locations where it was easy to access and read them. As populations grew and towns expanded, weather stations that were initially rural were enveloped by the rapidly expanding concrete jungle. As a result, temperatures read at these stations began to be affected by such non-climatic factors as the ‘Urban Heat Island Effect’. This phenomenon is well known from the temperature pattern around large cities; city centres can be 5^oC, or more, warmer than the surrounding countryside. 

Durkin argues that bogus temperature data from these badly sited stations has resulted in a spurious pattern of rapid warming. In contrast, temperature reconstructions using only rural stations show less warming, much of which occurred in the early 20^th Century prior to the rapid increase in CO₂ emissions. Data from the oceans as well as data recorded by weather balloons and satellites matches the rural record better according to scientists such as Willie Soon. 

This revised temperature record of temperature change – more irregular and slower than the official version – is then used to attack the underlying paradigm that temperature rise is a direct result of the increase in GHG’s. Durkin’s dissident experts argue that there are many other factors that affect climate, but which are simply ignored. These include solar activity, cosmic rays, ocean currents, clouds etc etc.  For Will Happer the temperature is simply rebounding from the Little Ice Age, a recent cold period for which the CO₂ paradigm offers no explanation. Is the consensus simply wrong?

Durkin’s Criticisms – Environmental Consequences

Durkin then tackles the supposed environmental impacts of climate change.  Whether we consider, for example, Atlantic hurricanes, wildfires or droughts, he argues that there is little evidence that things are getting worse, apocalyptic headlines not withstanding. Many of the claims appear in the popular press rather than in scientific journals. Durkin interprets them as baseless scaremongering promoted by craven journalists desperate to sell newspapers. The raw data simply do not support the alarmist narrative according to scientists such as Steve Koonin. Koonin argues that even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports find little hard evidence to justify the continual torrent of  negative stories in the media.

Durkin’s Ctiticisms – Climate Models

So, if there is little evidence of a climate emergency at the present day, what about all those forecasts of the coming apocalypse, perhaps even the extinction of mankind? According to Durkin’s experts, these too are unfounded. For a start, the climate models are all running much too hot and are not supported even by the exaggerated land-based data. And claims that an increase of global average temperature of 1.5^oC will lead to ‘climate breakdown’ are simply silly.

Why the Panic?

But if the science is so obviously wrong, why have so many in the western world bought into it? Durkin thinks that power-hungry politicians and anti-capitalist green groups both spotted an ideal opportunity to bend western society to their own ends. For politicians the emergency provides an ideal excuse for centralising power, whilst for greens it provides a rationale for the dismantling of capitalist society and a return to pre-industrial Eden. And climate scientists will continue to churn out the evidence because their funding is dependent on identifying climate threats.

Does Durkin have a Case? – Science & Data

There is little doubt that the climate establishment will dismiss Durkin’s criticisms as the work of a group of contrarian cranks. Barak Obama, no less has told us that “We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat Earth Society”. So who is right?

I think Durkin has done a fair job of highlighting some of the problems of climate science. He is surely right to challenge the global temperature data. Whether global warming is an existential threat or a manageable problem depends critically on the rate of temperature increase. Yet the climate establishment seems reluctant to address the influence of non-climatic factors that could be distorting the data. Willie Soon’s temperature record based on (hopefully) uncontaminated rural stations shows a lower rate of increase with a larger part of the temperature rise taking place in the early 20^th Century prior to the acceleration in CO2 emissions in mid-century. This is anecdotally supported by claims that the 1930’s, in the US at least, temperatures were much higher than today.  

It could be, though, that the discussion of ground-based temperature record soon becomes irrelevant. Durkin points out that we have been acquiring satellite-based temperature data since 1979. These data do indeed show a lower rate of temperature rise than the ‘official’ ground based data, but is this necessarily the good news that Durkin thinks it is? The UAH (University of Alabama, Huntsville US) data discussed by Roy Spencer in the film indicates a rate of increase of about 0.2^oC per decade (2^oC per century) for land. If this trend continues we will soon enter territory which climate scientists regard as dangerous.

Thus far I have some sympathy for Durkin’s case but when he then challenges basic greenhouse gas theory he is courting a charge of flat-earthism. The basic greenhouse gas theory is not in question – if Obama’s comment on ‘settled science’ were limited to that he would be quite right. The only legitimate argument concerns the amount of heating a given increase of CO₂ (and other GHG’s) will produce, all other factors being equal.  Contributors such as Will Happer are well aware of this; in fact Happer has explained elsewhere why additional CO₂ emissions might result in only a small rise in temperature. It’s a pity that here he talks about ‘scams’ and ‘fraud’ instead of sticking to the science. To get technical for a moment, the whole debate boils down to establishing the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of CO₂ and the other GHG’s. Failure to discuss this was an unfortunate omission. 

Does Durkin have a Case? – Environmental Consequences

If the pace and cause(s)of global warming are still under dispute, what of Durkin’s argument that the supposed environmental impacts are also being exaggerated? Here I think he is on surer ground; so many dire predictions have already proved unfounded – the extinction of the polar bear, the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, the submergence of New York etc etc – that the catastrophe narrative is wearing thin. 

The determination to pin all of the world’s ills on CO₂ is both silly and counter-productive. Take one example quoted in the film – the incidence of wildfires. It would not surprise me in the slightest if the number and extent of these fires had increased significantly since the 19^th Century. Not because of climate change, but simply from the pressures of an increasing and more affluent population that wants to exploit forests for leisure and living space. How many fires have been started by poorly maintained electricity networks, to say nothing of barbeques, discarded cigarettes and even arson? Yet every fire is greeted in the media as proof that the earth is burning up. And blaming it all on CO₂ makes it less likely that simple forest management measures that could reduce wildfires, whether climate change is real or not, are less likely to be put in place.

Are wild fires increasing or not? The figure shown in the film seems to refer to the US and shows a dramatic decline since a peak in the 1930’s. You could still find a version of this figure in Wikipedia in April 2024. However, if you go to Our World in Data, the figure is now clipped at 1983 and shows a rising trend over the past 40 years. The edit is justified by ‘consistent reporting’.  This is a disturbing feature of much of the climate science world – there always seem to be reasons to eliminate inconvenient data.  

Another example quoted in the film is hurricane activity. Even the IPCC accepts that ‘there is only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences’. The IPCC are careful to let you know that this does not imply that there has been no change – just that they have so far been unable to confirm it. But if the best science has such difficulties confirming that things are getting worse, whence all the apocalyptic headlines?

Things may not be that bad now but what of the near future? Can we make reasonable extrapolations of future temperature based on current trends and greenhouse gas theory? This is what the global climate models are supposed to do. But Durkin is quite right to point out that these models seem to be running too hot. It is nearly 50 years since the first global climate model appeared yet the latest generation of models still fail to match the empirical data. Building disaster scenarios on the basis of these models will not help us plan effectively for the future.

Do we Need to Reconsider Climate Change?

Has Durkin done enough, despite some questionable science, to persuade us to take a another look at climate change? Those who agree with Obama’s ‘flat-earthism’ comments will see that as time-wasting, no doubt motivated by the fossil fuel companies and their apologists. But if climate science is as robust as is claimed then it should be easy to rebut counter-arguments.  One of the reasons that many of us feel uneasy about climate science is the tendency for its proponents to smear opponents and question their motives, as Sallie Baliunas testified movingly in the film.

But the over-riding reason that climate change needs to be critically examined is the cost to all of us for preventing its supposed catastrophic consequences. As Carl Sagan once said, “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” I personally find it scarcely believable that we have set ourselves on a course to change our way of life, almost certainly for the worse, without first having first subjected the data to exhaustive scrutiny. 

I’m less concerned by Durkin’s claim that this is all an establishment stitch-up. Can the western scientific and political elite really be colluding to control the populace ‘by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary?’ It may be true that a consensus on climate change has been achieved by the simple expedient of marginalising anyone who questions the narrative. But this does not mean those views are not sincerely held. Nevertheless, the deification of the greenhouse gas theory has produced a scientific monoculture where evidence is no longer gathered to test the theory but to support it. Confirmation bias and motivated reasoning do the rest.

So whilst disagreeing somewhat with Durkin on the factors that have led us into a perceived ‘climate crisis’, I share his concern that the cure may be worse than the disease. For the UK alone, the bill for Net Zero is likely to stretch into the trillions of pounds. Politicians strive to outdo each other with decarbonisation pledges, pretending that a wholesale reorganisation of society can be achieved at minimal cost. The road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

How will we know if all this effort is worth it? Even if the UK cut its GHG emissions to zero today, it would only suppress the projected temperature rise by about one hundredth of one degree – an achievement both irrelevant and impossible to measure. Supporters argue that we need to put our own house in order to show an example to others. But the others show no sign of heeding that example; the developing world, led by China and India continue to increase their emissions. Despite 28 COP meetings over the past 30 years, atmospheric CO₂ is at an all-time high. 

Last Word

What to do? Durkin’s answer that we should just return to the status quo anti because the whole thing is just a hoax does not pass muster. But we should take a much more critical look at the whole of climate science. Funding for some ‘Red Teams’ to challenge the current paradigm would help. The climate establishment has made its case for the prosecution. Durkin has at least convinced me that it may be worth listening to the defense. We desperately need to unravel the science from the propaganda and evaluate it objectively. Given that such an exercise would take only a fraction of the sum envisaged to fight climate catastrophe, what objection could there be? We also need to recognise that climate change does not present us with a binary choice; disaster or salvation. Rather the consequences depend on how much heating occurs. How much is manageable and when does it become calamitous? We need to be sure of the consequences lest we imperil western civilisation on a wholly or partially imaginary threat. It may turn out that we are really playing with fire, but let’s just make sure first, no?