gloabal warming

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson. Climate correspondent, BBC News

(Page last updated at 15:22 GMT, Friday, 9 October 2009 16:22 UK)

"This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise. ...

One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up."

More precisely, the debate about whether there even is any such thing as "global warming" (or more accurately "anthropogenic climate change") is far from over.

Read the entire article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm.  Think for yourself.  Our brains are still the most powerful computers on the planet.  All the computer models, theories, and hypotheses are merely tools to help us think, not think for us.  Be aware of your biases too, we all have them.  Almost everyone believes that humans should (even must) be good stewards of the planet and its environment -- Regretably this can make almost everyone suceptible to manipulation in the name of doing good for the earth and its inhabitants.  Moreover, since this is a political debate as well as a scientific one, it may be revealing to follow the money.  And keep in mind that power, influence, and money are fairly fungible these days when it comes to political and business decisions; and sadly, scientific ones too (e.g., see http://chronicle.com/article/Medical-Journals-See-Cost-in/48393/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/346/24/1901).

This report is probably indicative of the state of the art on climate models.  The good thing about this report (http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/document/MITJPSPGC_Rpt180.pdf) is that (1) they take a systems thinking approach and make a real effort to deal with the complexity of the question, (2) they disclose all the models they cobble together, all the assumptions they make, the parameters they estimate, the sources of their data and the component models, and (3) then run Monte Carlo simulations to develop probability estimates.  The bad news is that the media will probably never look the details and just report the headlines and the colorful graphic (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/climate-change-1002.html). 

What astonishes me is how much time and money are going into this kind of work, how many government agencies and energy companies appear to be funding this, how complex the model is, and how many assumptions it requires.  In some ways this makes their findings appear to have high face validity and will limit serious examination of their work.  The fundamental underlying weaknesses of this work are (1) how suspect much of the underlying science is that they assume to be true before this research even begins, (2) that they appear to assume the component models and estimates are perfectly right before they begin the simulation, and (3) that they fail to disclose or include the probability or confidence intervals of any of the assumptions or component models (perhaps because this research assumes them all to be perfectly right before beginning).

Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry line "Are you feeling lucky, punk?" comes to mind as I ponder to what extend the world's policy makers, in their desire to be good stewards of the environment, may bet their national economies on this model which is basically no more than a weather forecast on steroids and mega-vitamins.

• "All we ever know is our models, but never the reality that may or may not exist behind the models and casts its shadow upon us who are embedded inside it. We imagine and intuit, then point the finger and wait to see which suspect for truth turns and runs. Our models may get closer and closer, but we will never reach direct perception of reality's thing-in-itself." – Stephen Hawking

• “Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” — Albert Einstein