Trust me, I’m a scientist!

Richard Jones

———————

Reflections on questions concerning global warming

Part 1: introductory 

———————

“Climate change is a multi-billion pound industry”

A climate change sceptic

———————

“Not surprisingly, the flow of information about climate change is dominated by the commercial media, and therefore directed mostly at backing profitable ventures. We see or hear mention of electric vehicles in conjunction with mention of climate change and ‘The Environment’ so often that unless compulsively sceptical, it is natural to simply take on board the premise that electric vehicles are A Good Thing for the environment and for tackling global warming.”

I was mulling over ideas for an article about the way the topic has been hijacked by business interests(1), when I read the above succinct statement of what was on my mind. Climate change is indeed big business, and predictably, facts and scientific knowledge and reasoning are drowned in the clamour of biased shouts promoting and opposing the business interests.

Someone responded: “Scientists believe it, overwhelmingly since the 1990s.”

If, until recently, I accepted that as true, is it because we have reliable evidence, as in a census of scientific opinion, or an ‘overwhelmingly’ convincing study based on a large random sample with evidence that it is representative? And is it relevant what entomologists ‘believe’? More to the point, is it even relevant what the most eminent accomplished climate scientist believes?

I suppose it is relevant, but not a basis for a scientific opinion. Scientists acting as scientists, rather than conduits for politically correct views, judge scientific propositions on the evidence, not on the accomplishments or reputation or status of the author of the proposition, still less on how many other scientists have accepted the proposition.

For the most part, an entomologist may well accept the view of a prominent climate scientist, at least until finding dissent among climate scientists. That is because the entomologist acting as a scientist, for the most part, is investigating insects, perhaps other arthropods, rarely (for comparison of some organ or tissue or process?) other animals. There may be one that participates in a climate study, observing fossil records or the response of a species to climate change. Only in these cases does their opinion have any relevance to the subject of climate change. The opinions of others are of no more or less interest than the opinion of a stockbroker or a janitor.

From my viewpoint, the public discussion of climate change has stood on its head the relationship of science and scepticism. It used to be scientists that were the sceptics arguing against the true believers over most of the spectrum of topics amenable to comparison with evidence. Alien abductions, UFOs, crop circles, etc; fake mysteries like how could they have built the pyramids; quackery in all its flavours–snake oil, chronic lyme disease (a huge scam in the US), faith healing, limitless range of sciency hoaxes like body pH, heavy metal chelation (a genuine treatment in rare cases of acute heavy metal toxicity but again, in the US, big business as a scam built on fake pathology using ‘provoked’ urine tests).

With climate change, amazingly, scientific (if that’s what it is) opinion is served up as a matter of faith with the unwashed masses asking “where is the evidence?” 

There is good reason for scientists to be sceptics. It is their job to be sceptical about science, never mind about woo.

We often hear things like ‘proven scientific fact’ and we may assume that the status of a ‘scientific law’ is that of something proven, indisputable. However, facts are input to science rather than output and scientific laws are models, generally mathematical, not the real thing. The models are sometimes proven wrong, often superseded by better models, but never proven. Usually, the models are mathematical or at least employ mathematics, and mathematics is one area of science that is built on robust proof. The many proven theorems about group theory cannot possibly prove the validity of “The Eight-Fold Way” which explained much of what was at the time known about fundamental particles. On the other hand, successful predictions of that and other models lend a degree of confidence.

When it comes to the science of climate change, we are dealing with something infinitely more complex than fundamental laws of physics. The questions for this science are of four (at least) different kinds. What has happened? What caused this to happen? How will this evolve? What should be done?

The first question is to be answered by observations. We are told that the global climate is becoming hotter (dangerously so). I will consider this in another article. Even here, however, we have scope for confusion, as it has become routine to refer to weather while purporting to speak of climate. This could be because the evidence for a storm or a drought or a fire is more direct, accessible, and impressive, than evidence for anything of global import.

Comments that I quoted were made in a discussion about the recent floods in Dubai. As is now commonplace with interesting weather events, the media treated this as a global climate change event. I have yet to see any credible basis for ascribing individual weather events to a climate change causality. Reuters(1) interviewed an expert who explained in detail that this was a normal weather event, in which a surface low and a high level low happened to coincide, making an atypically strong storm system. Near the end, the expert was cited conceding a connection with climate change in a manner that was so contradictory with her analysis, that one cannot avoid thinking that this was solicited by the interviewer. Perhaps having to decide quickly under pressure whether to say “no”, “no comment”, or “yes”, she took the easy path. “No comment” would have been correct, ideally explaining that there was no evidence, indeed no possibility of evidence, for assessing the relationship of this storm with global climate.

The remaining questions assume that the answer to the first affirms that there is dangerous global warming.

My proposed article (postponed, not abandoned) addressed the fourth question, about what we are to do. As I began to work on it, I realised that I had uncritically accepted the standard model answers to the first three:

1. Global climate is warming.

2. This is due primarily to human input, specifically the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to burning fossil fuels. (I never took seriously other inputs such as methane.)

3. Without drastic changes to the human input, global warming will continue with catastrophic consequences.

Standard answers to the fourth question, what to do, routinely involve reducing the human input. I agreed on the basic principle, but the only measure I agreed with was to eliminate the use of fossil fuels for power generation. That was, for me, a no brainer, as I have for at least 50 years considered fossil fuels a precious raw material, a limited resource that should be used as such and not burned.

I propose to examine all these questions in some detail in future articles.

(1) “How fast does the deer fly fly?” is, as I remember from decades ago, the title of an article by Irving Langmuir lamenting the publication of a scientist’s fanciful claims. I am unable to locate it online, probably because it has not been digitised, but there is a shorter letter ‘The speed of the deer fly’ that merely addresses the question without the rant. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.87.2254.233

2. The article was to show that ventures such as electric vehicles and the lithium batteries they employ, as well as relatively minor ones such as ‘green hydrogen’ do nothing for the global climate. I wanted to introduce this by affirming, for context, my views about climate change. Clearly, if there is no climate crisis, then the case for these industries is obviously fraudulent. My perspective was that there is a crisis and profiteers are kidding us about their products being valid responses to the crisis.

3. “The huge rainfall was instead likely due to a normal weather system that was exacerbated by climate change, experts say.

“A low pressure system in the upper atmosphere, coupled with low pressure at the surface had acted like a pressure ‘squeeze’ on the air, according to Esraa Alnaqbi, a senior forecaster at the UAE government’s National Centre of Meteorology.

“That squeeze, intensified by the contrast between warmer temperatures at ground level and colder temperatures higher up, created the conditions for the powerful thunderstorm, she said.

“The “abnormal phenomenon” was not unexpected in April as when the season changes the pressure changes rapidly, she said, adding that climate change also likely contributed to the storm.”

“What caused Dubai floods? Experts cite climate change, not cloud seeding” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/what-caused-storm-that-brought-dubai-standstill-2024-04-17/