The CO2 God Controls Environmental Disasters, Not
In my recent article “The Climate Religion”, I argued that “climate change”, the widespread belief that atmospheric CO2 controls climate and climate events, satisfies the defining criteria of a state religion. Professor Paul Brown responded to my article in his article entitled “The Religion of Climate Change Denial”. This is my reply to Professor Brown.
Professor Brown is silent on my argument that climate change science and policy serve global financiers and US-dominated geopolitics. He prefers a sanitized argument essentially limited to a pronouncement that “most scientists…”. Fine, let us examine the scientific question.
An elementary rule of scientific theorizing, which all (100{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117}) of scientists admit, is that one cannot prove a theory. One can only disprove a theory. Therefore, it is scientific to “deny”, and it is unscientific to assert validity of a theory on the basis that most scientists do not expressly oppose the said theory.
This is especially true when agreement with the said theory relies on non-conclusive statistical evidence, correlation rather than causal demonstration, and model predictions that are contradicted by observations.
Not only are the mean-global-surface-temperature predictions of more than one hundred state-of-the-art general circulation models (GCMs) contradicted by the accepted data1, but the models themselves have been shown to be intrinsically invalid irrespective of values of their adjustable parameters.2
What non-scientists like Professor Brown need to understand is that a single contradiction is sufficient to invalidate a theory, and that no amount of agreement can salvage a thus invalidated theory. It does not matter how many grant-receiving practitioners like the model.
Professor Brown concludes “We know how these changes affect heat waves, droughts, floods, ice melting, and sea level rise.” Actually, “we” don’t know. Scientists have not established a causal relation between CO2 and climate events, or sea level rise. That is why many scientists are publicly averse to such suggestions.3
Professor Brown did not actually read the scientific literature. Otherwise, he would have noted that, at this stage, believing that CO2 is responsible for climate disasters is logically equivalent to believing that the Devil is responsible for evil deeds.
Let us take droughts for example. Which newspaper editor would not be comfortable with a headline announcing that “global warming will bring more droughts”? Well, the authors of the most advanced model simulations, concerned with real data rather than “predictions”, show that forcing cannot reproduce known droughts and conclude that all the numerous and clustered mega-droughts of the last 1000 years were the result of natural variability.4
Let us take forest fires as another example. This is another climate-event category where some scientists have over-extended themselves. The methodological and bias errors should be embarrassing. There is not even a measured correlation between forest fire extent or intensity and CO2, let alone a plausible causal mechanism.5
Planetary-scale phenomena such as polar glacier melting and growth, and sea-level rise, are exceedingly complex, both to measure and to understand. These phenomena have not been causally linked to CO2. GCMs can’t even get their most reliable predictions of simple average quantities right, never mind complex spatiotemporal changes related to precipitation and ice.
Read more here: climateguy.blogspot.co.uk
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Denis Rancourt is a former tenured full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, on physics and environmental science, and writes social theory articles. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism, and a regular contributor to Dissident Voice.
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