Thursday, March 20, 2008

Reality versus simulation

Two quick links today that point to the continued uncertainty that constitutes the existing science on climate change.

The first is another example of the real world not following the directions of the models. The climate is supposedly warming and that should mean elevated sea levels and higher ocean temperatures. Except the oceans aren't warming. Why? We don't know. We can guess (speculate? insert fancy academic term for guess) but we don't know. Its not what the models forecast. Another case of empirical measurement countermining modeled speculation.

The second points to a deeper problem with the provenance of some particularly key tree-ring measurements and whether or not what was measured was really a proxy for temperature or rainfall. It appears some time series that were particularly significant in building public support for global warming, may indeed be a much better proxy for drought than warmth. Not only is this a fundamentally different measure, it also is a situation that dramatically calls into question the vaunted reliability of peer-reviewed, consensus science.

Neither of these examples is "proof" that global warming is a myth.
Climate changes. That is not disputed. The myth aspect arises when:
  • human causation is attached to those changes
  • the changes are touted as both unprecedented and disastrous, and
  • the alarmist rhetoric is justified by reference to science that supposedly validates the dogma but is in actuality (as these two examples illustrate), somewhat less conclusive.
Global warming can not be disproved because it is not a scientific fact: it is a political construct that utilises some aspects of scientific data, selectively, to bolster its apparent credibility.