Silver bullet or poisoned chalice?
Climate modelers admit their models are inadequate in some ways. They claim the next model, or one after that, will soon get it right. Modelers claim they're doing 'simple physics'. So they just need slightly more sophisticated models and the pieces of the climate jigsaw will all fall into place. This is the impression they always give - the solution to life, the universe and climate is just around the corner in the next climate model iteration. Built on the current model of applied "simple physics". Current models are nearly perfect. Future models need become just a little more perfect. Their next grant will allow them to bring it all together and deliver that silver bullet to destroy the bugbear of climate uncertainty. Such is the cosy, rosy world of climate modelers with their greenhouse gas effect models.
Modelers chase grant money. They need to find ever more grant money just to keep their jobs in academia. Grants lead to model tweaks and new papers. New papers must get favourable reviews by the climate establishment. Which explains why the climate modelers are so intellectually conservative. Researchers dare not upset the climate gravy train by developing anything radically new; or they are toast. Think outside the small box of greenhouse-gas-effect establishment dogma and they go from climate hero: solving the climate silver bullet and feeding off the rich bounty of climate science grants to climate denier: grant-less, possibly job-less, and persecuted by the SJW and climate alarmist media. Climate heroes cannot afford to admit to any big doubts in their models or the grants go elsewhere. Modelers are like deluded businessmen, one step away from bankruptcy. To the last moment, they're certain their business will be saved. They're certain their plans are coming together. Just one more loan will save the day. This money chase makes modelers fundamentally dishonest about how science should be done. The failure of climate models is a failure of the scientific community to properly do science, and a failure of scientific funding to understand how good science is done. In their case modelers are, in imagination and rhetoric, just one more grant away from finding the silver bullet to kill the climate uncertainty bugbear.
Models
Back to the models. Climate models are more than just simple physics artfully combined to solve the climate jigsaw puzzle. Modelers make many assumptions about how known physics combine. Many of these assumptions are hidden in the fact they wrote complex, interdependent maths in computer languages. No outsider can read one of these climate programs to see the assumptions gluing the climate physics together. Even if the outsider knows both the totality of existing physics and the computer language in use! The outsider would still need to learn the structure of the climate model, and concerns of the computer program.
The problem with models is not just existing complexity and modelers ignorance about, say, the precise effects of clouds, giving rise to parameterizations in models in place of physics, for example. Nor is it other specific problems identified with existing models. Model assumptions ignore many real-world climate factors such as the host of solar cycles. There are over ten important solar cycles which must be considered in the climate. Solar magnetism are well as insolation changes during cycles. Weaker magnetic fields allow more cosmic rays through to our atmosphere. These cosmic rays cause cascades of atmospheric ionization, each ion may become a nucleuses for cloud formation. These. potentially important. solar forcing moderation effects are ignored by modelers. Many modelers claim scientists studying cosmic ray effects mediated by solar magnetism are 'climate deniers'. Conceit much? This is one example of unknown physics which may one day make a better model, but which is currently ignored as pseudoscience by modelers. I've just been talking about a potential effect mediating some solar cycles. There are over ten solar cycles and potentially more effects.
Models have:
- hidden assumptions
- many of which are likely right,
- others may be wrong and breaking any possible working model,
- obsession and faith in a narrow definition of the greenhouse gas effect which is neither a law, hypothesis, nor theory
- by implication other interpretations of the greenhouse gas effect are ignored
- black-listed physics. (such as various solar cycles); the blacklist enforced by careerism, tribalism, groupthink, politics and grants
- potentially still unknown climate effects,
- flaws in model construction which can't be discovered while other flaws are present
What is it? Is it a bird, is it a plane, ...
When one makes assumptions about how the world works in science, one speculates and hypothesizes. We're taught that scientific hypotheses become accepted as scientific theory after the hypothesis makes repeatable, predictions about the world. A useful hypothesis is reused because it gives useful results; and is eventually called theory. Useless hypotheses are discarded. No one ever pretends that the hypothesis is true; but scientists eventually act as if an hypothesis is accepted theory and absolutely true. This 3-stage scientific method: "hypothesis -> real world test(s) -> accepted theory, or failed hypothesis" is a cardboard cutout caricature. Used by philosophers of science. It is untrue. It does not work like that.
- It ignores the crucial role of induction. Physics was first put together as a set of laws. Laws are basically true inferences about how the world works guided by observation and experiment. We have gas laws, laws of thermodynamics, etc. Each law is a very simple relationship between independent variables; always found to be approximately true. Scientific theories go a step further than laws. Theories explain how and why laws work. When a new hypothesis is proposed it must, sensibly, fit current laws of physics, and current theories. There are already a lot of constraints in place restricting new hypotheses. Namely the entire structure of existing science: currently accepted laws and theories. Scientists often see the development of science as just a tweak to smooth off the rough edges of science. This, kind of, explains the climate modelers' over-confidence in their non-working models. In their heads, they are just a few tweaks away form finding their silver bullet and Nobel prize!
- It ignores symmetry or 'beauty'. Much successful science in the last century has been guided by efforts to apply symmetry in science. This has both helped to solve problems and hindered to lead scientists down unsolvable blind alleys (such as the String Theory search for a unified theory of everything).
- It ignores the conservatism and groupthink, political constraints of scientists themselves. I already implied black-listed science and a greenhouse gas effect which works only one, politically driven, way. Establishment ideas aim to hype this greenhouse gas effect as a world destroyer unless humanity fixes its errant fossil fuel ways. Alternative explanations of how the greenhouse gas effect works cannot even be considered. Alternatives to the centrality of the greenhouse gas effect are scientific heresy and career suicide.
One ring to bind them all
What really is this greenhouse gas effect? It's The lynchpin upon which models are built, existing policy depends. It is not a law, not a hypothesis, and not a theory. It is a magic construction made from bits and bobs with hidden assumptions. It is political dynamite, and abracadabra. It will make or break careers in: science, policy formation, politics and media. Accept it and you have guaranteed acceptance by the establishment. Reject or criticise greenhouse gas hypotheses then you are a "shill", "denier", or "flat-earth" believer; a heretic to be tortured and burnt in public. To set an example to other potential heretics. This was set in stone, over 30 years ago when the UNFCCC recruited all Environmental NGOs as their propagandists, and shock troops to "stop climate change", "save polar bears" and avert "climate crisis"
The greenhouse gas effect, GHGE is not an accepted theory. It is too useless and unworkable to be that. Nor is it a proper hypothesis because it is nowhere defined. No canonical text explains it, and gives conditions under which it may be falsified. No proposed tests allow us to say whether it works or fails as an actual hypothesis. It may be partly right, and partly wrong at the same time. James Hansen, one of its principle promoters, said scientists who disbelieved it should be imprisoned. Many self-styled liberals and progressives believe imprisonment and persecution of scientific heretics will "save the planet" and "stop climate change" which they think threaten their very existence; their lives. The GHGE is basically Suaron's One Ring, but a dud magic ring; its power all derived from hypnosis, groupthink and belief that magic works.
The scientific establishment made the world like this. On the one hand: the climate model juggernaut, on a never-ending journey to nowhere. Spoon fed money to support establishment neo-Malthusian policy. On the other hand: penniless scientific heretics and unbelievers in search of lost climate science.
Q: Why am I certain GHGE is wrong? A: because the GHGE cannot reproduce the fingerprint of natural climate change found in climate data.
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