Is Climate Change ‘Science’ accurate or falsified?
“Trust science, not the scientists.” That is the essence of science. That should be widely shared. Unfortunately, climate change advocates have completed the twisting of science (although this was well underway). Science was created to eliminate opinions and the role of prestigious experts.
We are watching the rapid collapse of COVID-19 experts, like a house on a Malibu cliff after a heavy rain. Will the unsustainable hoax of climate change be far behind? The establishment system exalts experts if they advance statist goals. But the public rejects royalty.
First, science has decayed into “Imagineering.” Thought experiments are not science. (Imagining things can lead to proposed hypotheses. But a hypothesis must still be tested by hard-core experimentation.) Many argue desperately for speculation as being science when science was designed to avoid speculation.
What matters most is what we do not know. The surprise factor between what we expected and what actually happens in real-world experiments is where discovery lives. We don’t know what influences are happening that we did not know about. That is why Imagineering is not science.
Second, so we have to run actual empirical experiments. To determine whether carbon dioxide (CO2) causes the Earth to be warmer would require experiments “with all other things being equal.”
To qualify as science, we would need to contrast Earth A with no human industrial activity against Earth B with human industrial activity. All other things would have to remain the same, identically. Then we would have to repeat that experiment. So we would need Earth C, D, E, F, G, etc.
This cannot be done. The correct response is for grown-ups to say “We don’t know.” But there is too much to gain in publicity and fame. So we corrupt science to reach conclusions that cannot be scientifically confirmed.
There has never been an empirical experiment to test whether CO2 causes a planet to be warmer. Have we tested Venus or Mars by removing some of the CO2 from those planets? No. Then we don’t know what role CO2 plays. You can strongly believe it. But that’s faith, not science.
Third, because it is impossible to test Earth A versus Earth B, climate change proponents are trying to use another “proxy” by comparing current time periods against the past. This is an attempt to fake up an experiment, substituting for Earth A versus Earth B. Today is Earth A. The past is Earth B.
But we cannot “hold all other factors constant” across different time periods on Earth. There are too many influences known and unknown changing over time. We know that the Earth’s orbit changes shape under the influence of other planets in long-period oscillations called Milankovitch Cycles. So “Today’s Earth” vs. “Yesterday’s Earth” cannot replace an empirical experiment because we cannot control for other influences.
Fourth, the behavior of CO2 in a container in a laboratory cannot be projected to the open atmosphere. Climate change activists say that scientists prove in the laboratory that CO2 “traps” heat.
But the question is how does the planetary atmosphere of a gigantic planet behave? We don’t care what CO2 does in a box in a lab. We care how the massively complex global climate responds.
Fifth, the reason why is because the atmosphere is in constant motion. All climate change theory is intrinsically grounded on the assumption that air cannot move. CO2, they argue, is like a “blanket.” But it is not. Air is not nailed to the Earth’s surface. Therefore, we cannot take observations from an enclosed container and conclude anything about the open atmosphere, which is freely and constantly in motion.
The assertions of climate change are impossible to test. The Earth is too big. The atmosphere is too complex. There are too many forces at work, known and unknown. Science presumes that what cannot be confirmed is treated as false (for now). We cannot pretend we know things we don’t know.
Sixth, what do we know? We know that hot air rises. We know that the atmosphere circulates vertically through “convection.” We know that convection is central to weather. We know that heat at the Earth’s surface is transported up to high altitudes by convection. We know that the very purpose of weather and convection is to transport heat from the surface to the edge of space. We know that the heat is radiated into outer space.
Seventh, CO2 does not trap heat. A CO2 molecule absorbs energy at frequencies determined by its electrons. In one of the weirdest mysteries in physics, the absorption of electromagnetic radiation is converted into kinetic energy. Increased vibration is experienced as heat (and pressure).
Then the CO2 molecule re-emits the energy. A photon of infrared frequency energy is absorbed and re-emitted. Then it is absorbed by another molecule. Then re-radiated. Absorbed, emitted, absorbed, emitted – maybe thousands of times per second. This is the opposite of trapping.
But they say CO2 is “opaque” to infrared energy. When CO2 re-emits heat energy it gets absorbed by another CO2 molecule. Again, that’s irrelevant, because the atmosphere moves vertically, transporting the heat up to space. It’s also wrong because everything absorbs heat. Put a penny out in the sunshine. It will get hot, without being CO2.
Eighth, CO2 probably cools the earth. By absorbing heat and carrying it to the edge of space, CO2 would facilitate the release of heat out into space.
The air is thinner above, and thicker below. And the Earth is curved. So at high altitudes, the probability of an IR photon escaping out into space is significantly greater than being re-absorbed by another air molecule. The air is very thin at 5 to 10 miles up at the top of convection, and thinning even more rapidly above that. There is a built-in bias causing heat emitted by CO2 molecules to leave the planet, not to stay.
Ninth, the quantity of plants can freely expand, especially algae and seaweed in the 70 percent of the Earth’s surface that is lakes and oceans. If the Earth were warmer, rainfall would increase, droughts would decrease, and plants would proliferate with warmth, moisture, and more CO2. We should expect proliferating plants to consume any CO2 surplus.
Tenth, we do not have scientifically valid temperature measurements earlier than World War II. The machine to measure CO2 in the open atmosphere (meant to measure a patient’s breath) existed but did not work well before 1930. The earliest spotty records of temperature in only a few locations date back only to around 1850. An early advocate for global warming lamented that CO2 measurements were unreliable.
Because of the complex nature of the Earth, including many influences we probably don’t know about, we cannot use short periods of time to draw conclusions. If we knew the Earth warmed over the last 200 years that would not tell us why, in the climate of a 4.5 billion-year-old planet.
It’s like saying I got my car brakes changed, and then my house was struck by lightning. Therefore, brake changes cause lightning. Repeated experiments would be required on the hypothesis. Just A happened, then B happened is not science. Over such short periods of time, the noise of other phenomena drowns out any signal.
The key to successful science is to isolate just one single cause and carefully measure its effect. Climate change opinions do not meet these standards.
See more here: americanthinker.com
Header image: Centere for Environmental Law
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Bevan Dockery
| #
A simple observation soon debunks the climate change hoax.
After a snowfall, walk out into the open ground and you will see that the snow melts in areas receiving sunshine but remains in hollows and areas shaded from the Sun. Why? Because there is no heat radiating down from the sky above in spite of its CO2 content, proving beyond doubt what climate scientists have failed to observe, that CO2 does not cause warming of the ground. The small amount of radiation emitted by atmospheric CO2 does not represent a hotter source than the ground, which is what would be needed to increase the temperature of the ground.
This will also apply when there is frost on the ground. The Sun will melt the ice in those places being warmed by the Sun but the icicles will remain in areas not receiving direct sunlight as there is no heat coming down from the sky to melt them.
Again, this applies after rain. The Sun dries areas that its rays reach but the shaded areas remain damp because there is no heat from the sky above to evaporate the water.
Applying my knowledge and experience obtained from a career in exploration geophysics to the analysis of climate data for the past 25 years has shown that it is temperature that determines the rate of generation of atmospheric CO2. This is derived from actual scientific measurements of what has really happened, not computer models that can only apply to the programmer’s limited understanding of Nature. There is no such thing as CO2 induced global warming.
Reply
Alan
| #
This is an observation that everybody can make but how often do we have this pointed out?
I don’t agree with the last paragraph. It accounts for CO2 being released and absorbed by the oceans but ignores the release of CO2 from other sources, including our activities/
Reply
Bevan Dockery
| #
Alan, calculate the annual rate of change of CO2 concentration (this removes the seasonal variation) and compare it with the temperature data for the same area. The correlation is plain for all to see.
Furthermore the sum of the temperatures (after subtracting the minimum temperature value) give the same graph as the CO2 concentration, ie as the time rate of change of the CO2 concentration correlates with the temperature, the integral (sum) of the temperatures over time must correlate with the concentration graph, straight forward integral calculus.
For detail see my web site.
Reply
Andy
| #
Correlation is not causation 🙂 Every ice core shows temperature changing before a change in CO2. Therefore, temperature drives CO2, not the other way round.
Reply
Bevan Dockery
| #
That is correct Andy.
In comparing temperature with rate of change of CO2 concentration, the maximum rate corresponds with the temperature maximum. Consequently the CO2 maximum logically follows after the rate of change maximum and thus also follows after the temperature maximum. So the proposition that temperature determines the rate of generation of CO2 fits nicely with the data.
The opposite is not possible as a time rate of change cannot cause a fixed level, eg a rate of 2ppm per annum could be from zero to 2 ppm or 1052 to 1054 ppm or any other values differing by 2.
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Bevan and Andy,
Andy, I quote your comment because it is shorter and clearly summarizes what Bevan commented: “Therefore, temperature drives CO2, not the other way round.”
You both propose there is some relationship between temperature and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide at the same time you claim ‘correctly’ that there is no greenhouse effect of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration upon the atmospheric temperature.
To explain this contradiction you need to always refer to the known (observed) fact that the solubility of carbon dioxide gas in the oceans varies as the ocean’s temperature varies.
We must always accurately define that which we know via observations (measurements).
Have a good day, Jerry
MattH
| #
Hi Andy, Bevan, Jerry, and cool ones.
As you know, It takes approximately 1000 years for one cycle of the global oceanic circulation.
Warmer surface ocean water has a pH of around 8.2 whilst the deep oceanic water’s pH is around 7.8.
As the bulk of sea water is deep water there is a lot of C02 to be released into the atmosphere from deep water upwelling in our warmer climate until the climate begins cooling.
Water and CO2 (methane) is being released by thawing permafrost which when combined with oceanic CO2 release accounts for much of the natural atmospheric CO2 variability as a result of natural climate variability.
Whew. Matt
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi MattH,
Sorry, but you began: “As you know, It takes approximately 1000 years for one cycle of the global oceanic circulation.”; and I don’t know this.
For my understanding is that the ocean’s natural circulation is driven by the. surface atmosphere’s circulation (wind) which slopes the ocean surface so gravity drives a shallow layer beneath the surface layer being moved by the wind.
However, we must not forget the role that geothermal activity at the bottom of the oceans might have upon a ‘localized’ transfer of deep ocean carbon dioxide up into these near surface layers. Nor should we ignore the possibility that volcanic activity might have injected carbon dioxide into the bottom water’s of oceans so that this bottom water is super-saturated with carbon dioxide and an earthquakes shakes this water with the same result we experience when shake a can (bottle) of a carbonated beverage just before we open it..
So, based upon experience the ocean-carbon dioxide system cannot really be understood until Scientists pretend to fully understand non-equilibrium systems. Which I doubt will happen any time soon.
But we still have our observations even if we cannot quantitatively understand what qualitatively we observe.
Conversations like this are very profitable and I await your peer-review of this comment.
Have a good day, Jerry
Have a good day, Jerry
Have a good day, Jerry
MattH
| #
Hi Jerry.
I was dealing with simplistic drivers of phenomena.
Here is some more.
The Gulf Stream is a significant current and when it arrives in the Artic Ocean it turns around and heads south because it is overwhelmed by this planet’s strongest oceanic current motor.
That stronger motor is the roaring forties, furious fifties, and screaming sixties around and round Antarctica driving the Southern ocean.
Because the Southern ocean current cannot all fit through Drake passage some of it disperses elsewhere including into the Arctic ocean and forcing the Gulf Stream to turn around. Key word, forcing.
The below reference contains one of the better global ocean current maps as well as a description that eerily resembles your description.
https://www.britannica.com/science/ocean-current.
Oh, and that heat wave you conjured up. A significant driver of that ‘heat dome” is the air mass that was carried to the Pacific North West from Venezuela and the Caribbean Sea. That airstream has moved East towards Hudson Bay and some intensity is now dispersed by terrestrial landscape.
http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/charts/global/gmslp.000.shtml.
Cheers Jerry and cool ones. Matt
MattH
| #
Oh, you are correct Jerry. I should have included co2 from volcanoes. And as for earthquakes shaking up the oceanic soda pop. The imagination Einstein mentioned. Great.
Mark Tapley
| #
Hello Alan:
Any manmade CO2 is so inconsequential it is not relevant. I believe the total in the atmosphere is 0.04%. A. miniscule about. Would be good to have more. It would encourage better plant growth which would be good for the whole planet.
Reply
B
| #
https://youtu.be/sXtmnaQWXr8 – The World wonders after the Beast | The path to a Sunday Law
Reply
Alan
| #
This is a well written piece, going back to the fundamentals. I would argue that heat cannot be trapped by definition – it is thermal energy transferring from a high temperature to a lower temperature. It might make more sense to say that thermal energy is trapped, but that would mean that everywhere is at the same temperature, which will not happen unless the entire universe is at the same temperature. The important point when discussing radiation is that it is not thermal energy, it is electromagnetic energy and only transfers thermal energy when transferring for high to low temperatures.
It makes good points about experiments. We cannot create a physical model of the earth’s system and a mathematical model is only as good as the equations and its accuracy has to be verified against the climate. Not one model is accurate, and the equations include an assumed relationship between CO2 and temperature, so they will always show this in the model outputs.
The experiments we regularly see on TV with glass tubes and candles are no more than magic tricks. An IR thermometer or camera cannot detect air and so a candle at one end is detected. Fill it with CO2 and the camera detects the CO2 and cannot see the candle. It does not mean that the CO2 has instantaneously reached the temperature of the candle, which is too ridiculous for words, but manages to fool the scientifically ignorant population being turned out by schools.
They equally don’t understand insulation. Insulation does not increase temperatures; it slows down the heat loss which is a completely different issue.
There is a good description of what happens to radation in the atmosphere.
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
The invisible imaginary problem of CO2 would never have been an issue without the Zionist elite manufacturing this fraud with their Club of Rome back in the 60’s. The same is true with the fake virus which is a carry over from the phony AIDS “epidemic” exposed by PCR inventor Mullis.
The elites don’t care about rational scientific arguments. They are using their control of all of the MSM to imploy emotional pleas and scare tactics against the masses. The public is not going to listen to scientific dissertations but must be confronted in simple terms with the harm caused by the Zionist agendas of fake medical frauds and environmental extremism.
It is interesting to note that originally the first climate disaster was presented as the “new ice age.” It was not long however until it morphed into global warming and now that we are entering a slight cooling phase it is climate change.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
In the first paragraph of this article the word ‘science’ appears 4 times. Louis Elzevir, publisher of ‘Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences’, stated (as translated): “Intuitive knowledge keeps pace with accurate definition.” So, what is your or this article’s author’s ‘accurate definition’ of the word SCIENCE? I cannot not find that this author ever gives any definition (accurate or otherwise) of ‘SCIENCE’.
I have read that Louis Elzevir was not only the publisher of Galileo’s book, he was also its ‘editor’ who gave the book its title which as not the one which Galileo had written. Therefore, I assume that Louis also wrote the Table of Contents which was divided into Days.
The title of the first day was: “First new science, treating of the resistance which solid bodies offer to fracture.” The title of the second day was: “Concerning the cause of cohesion.” The title of the third day was: “Second new science, treating of motion [movimenti locali].” Further divided into: “Uniform motion” and “Naturally accelerated motion.” The title of the fourth day was: “Violent motions.” “Projectiles.”
I had trouble understanding what Louis meant by “ACCURATE DEFINITION”. Until I read: “In dealing with steady or uniform motion, we need a single definition which I give as follows: By steady or uniform motion, I mean one in which the distance traversed by the moving particle during any equal intervals of time, are themselves equal.”
“We must add to the old definition (which defined steady motion as one in which equal distances are traversed in equal times) the word “any,” meaning by this, all equal intervals of time; for it may happen that the moving body will traverse equal distances during some equal intervals of time and yet the distances traversed during some small portion of these time-intervals may not be equal, even though the time-intervals be equal.” Hence, an accurate definition of uniform motion by adding the word “any”.
This seems to be what Louis saw when he first read Galileo’s hand written Italian transcript and concluded that the book must be published. Which so few current SCIENTISTS seem to have ever read in the Italian language or in the English language as translated by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. (1914)
Have a good day, Jerry
PS This the link to other article and I believe I had added to the comment now submitted here. (https://principia-scientific.com/climate-change-a-convenient-truth-by-jim-hollingsworth/#comment-5257). This other article should also deserved to be read if you haven’t.
Reply
Randy
| #
Jesus. “ Seventh, CO2 does not trap heat. A CO2 molecule absorbs energy at frequencies determined by its electrons. In one of the weirdest mysteries in physics, the absorption of electromagnetic radiation is converted into kinetic energy. Increased vibration is experienced as heat (and pressure).
Then the CO2 molecule re-emits the energy. A photon of infrared frequency energy is absorbed and re-emitted. Then it is absorbed by another molecule. Then re-radiated. Absorbed, emitted, absorbed, emitted – maybe thousands of times per second. This is the opposite of trapping. ”
CO2 most definitely does trap heat. Carbon dioxide absorbs energy at a variety of wavelengths between 2,000 and 15,000 nanometers — a range that overlaps with that of infrared energy. As CO2 soaks up this infrared energy, it vibrates and re-emits the infrared energy back in all directions. About half of that energy goes out into space, and about half of it returns to Earth as heat, contributing to the ‘greenhouse effect.’
Reply
Zoe Phin
| #
Heat is the spontaneous flow of energy from hot to cold. That’s the definition. Flow is the opposite of trapping. And Heat literally can’t “return” from cold to hot.
Those are the facts. Repeating mere rhetoric (and not understanding that’s all you’re doing) doesn’t change reality.
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Randy,
First the atmosphere (including CO2) is not being heated by the Earth. This fallacy is a result of people believing that because N2 and O2 do not absorb visible or IR radiation they do not absorb energy radiated by the sun. This violates the laws of thermodynamics which says all matter absorbs radiated energy. N2 and O2 absorb the UV and X-rays emitted by the sun and convert it to kinetic energy which in turn heats the CO2 in the troposphere.
If you look att the chemical composition of the atmosphere you will see the highest layer (closest to the sun) consists of helium sand hydrogen. The next layer consists of helium and oxygen atoms. It takes 450,000 joules/mole to split an oxygen molecule into oxygen atoms, so we know this layer contains more than 108,000 calories/ 32 grams go oxygen molecules. The next layer contains N2O2 and N2O molecules so this layer contains enough energy to partially split N2 molecules (920,000 joules/mole) and oxygen molecules. This splitting of oxygen molecules into oxygen atoms continues down to the stratosphere where ozone is formed by the oxygen atoms. Since only about 5% of the UV emitted by the sun makes it to the Earth’s surface we know that the UV is continuing to heat O2 and N2 through the troposphere.
Second: When an object radiates energy that energy decreases with distance. In the pathetic GHGT the energy from the Earth would decrease with altitude and if it were absorbed and reradiated by CO2 back to the surface it would again decrease with distance. The result would be that the returning energy would be much less than the energy of the Earth’s surface and it would add nothing to the energy being radiated by the Earth. You do not add “heats” Adding 20C water to 80C water will not produce 100C water.
The whole GHGT and AGW are garbage physics pretending to be science
Herb
Reply
A Reasonable Man
| #
Really great article here. And the last part of Herbs’ comment really explains well what is actually taking place in the atmosphere. I’m not a professional scientist, but any good student in a vocational Heating ventilation and air conditioning class seem get a better understanding of thermodynamics than these AGW Zealots with PHDs teaching in some universities.
Thanks, John O
Reply