Climate Science in Disarray: Fraying at the Seems

Image Source

Recent revelations that the oceans are no longer warming, and satellite readings showing that Earth land temperatures have stabilised over the past ten years, have caused much concern among believers of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Skeptics of the catastrophic climate interpretation have begun to grow bolder in looking at alternative climate forcings besides CO2. The catastrophic branch was in need of rescue from malignant moderates. Imagine their relief, when Lancaster scientists Sloan and Wolfendale announced that they had proven that there is no sun-climate link! The celebration in orthodox circles was jubilant, and much publicized. But then, scientists began pointing out that what Sloan and Wolfendale claim to have proved, was not proven at all.

Image Source

The basic theory as promoted by Svensmark is illustrated in the image above. Galactic cosmic rays interact with the atmosphere to promote formation of low level clouds--which reflect sunlight away from earth before it can heat the oceans and land. An active solar wind will deflect many of the galactic cosmic rays so that they cannot instigate Terran cloud formation. The lack of low level clouds allows more sunlight to heat the land and seas, thus heating the Earth more. Sloan and Wolfendale (PDF) claimed to have refuted Svensmark's hypothesis, and the news media believed them. Unfortunately, the Lancaster scientists looked at the wrong type of cosmic ray, so they seem to have missed the mark.

Sloan and Wolfendale raised three critiques which supposedly discredit the CRF/climate link. A careful check, however, reveals that the arguments are inconsistent with the real expectations from the link. Two arguments are based on the expectation for effects which are much larger than should actually be present. In the third argument, they expect to see no phase lag, where one should actually be present. When carefully considering the link, Sloan and Wolfendale did not raise any argument which bares any implications to the validity or invalidity of the link.

One last point. Although many in the climate community try to do their best to disregard the evidence, there is a large solar-climate link, whether on the 11-year solar cycle (e.g., global temperature variations of 0.1°C), or on longer time scales. Currently, the cosmic-ray climate link is the only known mechanism which can explain the large size of the link, not to mention that independent CRF variations were shown to have climatic effects as well. __Source__via__Lubos

In addition, the new Solar Cycle 24 is still reluctant to come out to play. The longer cycle 24 takes to commence in full, the lower its eventual activity is expected to be. We are already expecting cycle 25 to be of extremely low activity. If the low activity begins earlier, with cycle 24, we may see global cooling of earlier onset, greater extent, and longer duration than anyone expected.

To top it off, some very public figures in climate science are beginning to defect from the up-till-now well managed "consensus herd." Kerry Emanuel, hurricane modeler and researcher, has expressed public doubts about the GCM's ability to predict severe weather activity.

The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet. __Source

More on Emanuel here

And here

More on the great unraveling here

H/T Tom Nelson


At this time the alarmist CAGW movement is the politically correct interpretation of climate science. That means that research that follows the PC line are more likely to be funded, and more likely to be published and cited by mainstream media.

As long as the research is politically correct, it is passed through the checkpoints almost automatically, with little scrutiny.

Only when the research begins to question the politically popular viewpoints does it come under the microscope, and every small blemish is magnified in an attempt to disqualify the challenging viewpoint.

Under the government of the USSR, all challengers to Lysenkoist biology were put in their place by the powers of the state. As the EU and other inter-governmental agencies gain more power, and approach the authoritarianism of the old USSR, perhaps we will see similar punishments meted out to skeptics of CAGW? It is quite likely to happen, unless a new renaissance of enlightenment thinking descends upon the university and society at large. But don't hold your breath.