Echoes From Paris

Unscientific Nonsense

Now that the Paris confabulation is over and rapidly disappearing in the rear-vision mirror we thought it may be useful to recapitulate some of the fatal flaws in global warmism.  The reasons listed below are in no particular order, but they provide a useful summary of why we at this blog mock the whole enterprise of anthropogenic global warming and its alleged threats.

Global warming of the man-caused variety has become a political cause masquerading as science.  For this, scientists the world over are responsible.  That is not to say that all scientists support the hoax.  We are sure that the vast majority of them have not given it much thought.  They ought to have.  Provocateurs are undermining the credibility of science itself.  Things are being said, done, and claimed to be science which are not scientific in any sense of the word.

Science is a limited heuristic enterprise.  It can focus only upon the empirical.
 This limitation is also its strength.  It is like the shot putter who is utterly incapable of running 100 metres under ten seconds, but when it comes to hurling a metal ball, he is exemplary.  Science deals with recorded empirical data, constructs hypotheses as to what is "going on", and then rigorously tests by repeated experimentation to see whether the hypotheses are true.

Anything which cannot be tested and subject to falsification is beyond the competence of science.  The warming of the earth's climate is a testable hypothesis, easy enough (over time) to verify or dismiss.  If true, the hypothesized causes of the warming could also be empirically verified or rejected.  But when climate scientists (from whatever discipline) accepted the notion that the issue was not specifically about climate temperatures rising, but  about climate change in general they departed from the realm of useful science.  Climate change--the hypothesis that the climate is changing--may be true, but it is of no value empirically.  It is stating the obvious.  Moreover it can never be falsified.

Because "change" is not defined, apart from variability, it is always going to be true.  But what is causing the climate to change?  Climate change scientists have an hypothesis: increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are causing the climate to change.  But is it likely that what would cause temperatures to rise is different from what would cause colder temperatures?  And how would the hypothesis ever be falsified because climate has always been variable.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a well-known fallacy in reasoning.  It means that co-incidence does not prove causation.  The boy beats his drum every day just before the sun goes down.  He (and others) conclude that the beating of the drum causes the sun to set.  But the claim can be easily tested and disproved.  Stop beating the drum and see whether the sun sets.  But the boy refuses.  His claim can never be falsified.  Since CO2 has always been in the atmosphere, and since climate is always changing, the claim is both fallacious (resting on the fallacy of  "after the event, therefore caused by the event") and unverifiable.

But no.  Climate "science" is wedding to an hypothesis asserting that higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere causes all kinds of climate variability or changes.  Thus, if we experience a particularly cold winter, it is evidential proof of the damage being done by higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.  But, if the next  year we experience a particularly warm winter, it is also evidential proof of the damage of CO2 concentrations.  The opposite climatic conditions allegedly confirm the hypothesis.  The hypothesis thus is exposed as a statement of faith or belief, not scientific or empirical.

Since climate has varied forever, variability is always going to be the norm.  But if that same condition (climate variability) is offered as evidence of the destructive effects of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, the hypothesis is always going to be true; it cannot be falsified.   And yet that is what the majority of scientists appear to have accepted.  The inevitable outcome is a steep decline of respect for science and scientists.  How could or would they be so gulled, so asleep at the wheel?

But it gets worse.  The hypothesis--meaningless though it be--has been taken over by politicians (who ever lust for expanded powers of the state and, thereby, themselves) and capitalists (who sense a way to harness the powers of the state to funnel the money expropriated from citizens into their corporate pockets).  It has been "framed" as a great crisis threatening all humanity.  It is scaremongering for profit.  It is dishonest, self-serving, and destructive.

But scientists, to their abiding discredit--with few notable exceptions--have remained silent.  They have gone along to get along.  They have not been prepared to call out "anthropogenic CO2-caused global warming" for what it is--an an unproven, non-empirical speculation.  It would take years and years of research to confirm or reject the hypothesis--and it would start with a bunch of historical data that provides evidence for rejecting the hypothesis as simply not true.  Have there not temperatures been much warmer in the past, while concentrations of CO2 been allegedly much lower?  And conversely, there have been periods when temperatures have been much colder in the past, with CO2 concentrations allegedly much lower.  The historical evidence strongly implies that CO2 concentrations are uncorrelated to climate conditions.  

But as for CO2 resulting in climate change, an hypothesis which proposes that increasing CO2 concentrations can cause global freezing and global warming at the same time, it is an hypothesis based upon a fallacy.  Moreover it can never be falsified.  Every piece of climate data, every measurement supports or proves the theory--just as every night the young drummer "proved" his proposition.

The majority of scientists have not called out "anthropogenic CO2 caused climate change" as unscientific nonsense.  Amongst us laymen there is a rising conviction that the emperor has well and truly lost his clothes.  And there is a co-incident conviction: an emperor naked is not a pretty sight.