Former AGW Believer Turns AGW Skeptic; Says It's "Not Science"

Via Hot Air, where Jon Huntsman says he believes in global warming because 90% of scientists do, a great article. Worth reading in full.

The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.

Let’s set a few things straight.

The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.

The whole "science" of global warming is based on a hunch. Carbon dioxide, itself, is not enough to warm the earth catastrophically. AGW skeptic and noted physicist Freeman Dyson has worked out the math-- even if you replaced every single particle of oxygen with carbon dioxide, the earth would only warm by about eight degrees. And since current CO2 levels are about 400 parts per million, obviously that is an absurd hypothetical.

But AGW posits there is a positive feedback mechanism. Some CO2 comes in, makes some more moist air, which itself is a greenhouse gas, which makes the earth warmer, which makes more CO2, which makes more moist air... And so on.

Almost the entirety of AGW theory is based on this postulated positive feeback mechanism.

There is no evidence for it. It's plausible, but a negative feedback mechanism is also plausible -- moist air makes clouds which reflects more sunlight away, mitigating any heating by adding some cooling shade.

Or maybe there's not really any strong feedback either way, neither positive nor negative.

The scientist points out that all the predictions of a positive feedback have failed. It is predicted that such positive feedback will produce masses of moist air over the tropics; there are none. We've sent lots of weather balloons to check, but no evidence of the key predictive claim of AGW "science."

They don't care. Because it's not science. It's faith.

At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.

posted by Ace at 04:22 PM

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