Part 5 of 10: Global Warming Myths Debunked!
Posted: Monday, December 25th, 2006 by damnHippyTags: Bullshit, Climate Change, Politics, Pollution, Rants, Science, Weather
So Called "Myth" #5: Computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming.
Their Argument In It's Entirety: Normally I try to summarize their arguments but this one is too dense, I didn't want you to miss a bit.
"Computer models can be made to "verify" anything by changing some of the 5 million input parameters or any of a multitude of negative and positive feedbacks in the program used.. They do not "prove"anything. Also, computer models predicting global warming are incapable of properly including the effects of the sun, cosmic rays and the clouds. The sun is a major cause of temperature variation on the earth surface as its received radiation changes all the time, This happens largely in cyclical fashion. The number and the lengths in time of sunspots can be correlated very closely with average temperatures on earth, e.g. the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. Varying intensity of solar heat radiation affects the surface temperature of the oceans and the currents. Warmer ocean water expels gases, some of which are CO2. Solar radiation interferes with the cosmic ray flux, thus influencing the amount ionized nuclei which control cloud cover." [12/21/2006, Myth #5, FriendsofScience.org]
The Truth: Half of their argument might actually be based in fact amazingly… but I'll get to that later. They start off by saying that computer models can be made to verify anything based on the input parameters. This is true, computers can be made to play Quake or Doom, they can be made to surf the web for porn and even run scientific simulations. Computers can do just about anything if you tweak the input parameters enough. It's a ridiculous argument to make.
Seriously though, computer models are incredibly difficult to create, because it involves taking an analog world with an infinite number of variables, slicing it up in any multitude of subjective ways and then tweaking it until it's thought to be accurate enough to predict the future.
What they conveniently don't mention, is that scientists don't just guess at their variables run the simulation and hope for the best. They use this new thing called the scientific method, that these guys are obviously such fans of, to determine how to setup the simulations properly. Also any good climate model will be tested against the past so that the model's results can be reality-checked and tweaked accordingly. If the model can't predict the past accurately then it's pretty much assumed it won't predict the future accurately either.
Although it's true that they don't necessarily prove anything, they are the best method we have for predicting the future and are a hell of a lot more accurate than a crystal ball.
These guys really put their foot in their mouths when they argue that computer models cannot predict the effect of solar radiation on our climate, which they admit is cyclical. If it's cyclical then by it's very nature it can be predicted and modeled. Not that that matters, since the effect of the sun's natural radiation cycles has been shown to have a miniscule effect on global climate changes on its own.
Tom Wigley, a co-author of a scientific review published in Nature in September 2006, "Our results imply that, over the past century, climate change due to human influences must far outweigh the effects of changes in the Sun's brightness". [TerraDaily, 2006]
Let's be fair now though, there is recent scientific evidence that suggests solar radiation fluctuations may affect the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth. The studies suggest that cosmic rays may play a part in upper-atmosphere cloud formation which could affect the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface. It is possible that an increase in solar intensity could disrupt these rays and thus disrupt upper atmosphere cloud formation which could in-turn warm the Earth. Congrats Friends of Science you've got one partially correct this time. 1 out of 20+ ain't bad, you've won the lottery of scientific fact… congratulations.
Of course they did forget to mention a few things about the whole cosmic ray disturbance thing. First of all, it is much more inconclusive science than the whole CO2 causes global warming thing that they think is full of scientific holes. It's a relatively new idea and hasn't been substantially tested or verified yet, so the jury is still out. Also even if it's 100% true that the sun contributes to global warming we still have the problem of human produced CO2 which is still heating the globe. One of these things we can't control, that's kind of the point of this whole climate crisis thing. Fix what you can control, not what you can't.
Common misconceptions about global warming - [Friends of Science]
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