Climate change and the ‘settled science’ bullies
The controversy over man-made global warming is far from settled. Despite claims that “the science is all in” and “there is no room for debate,” the scientific method, with repeatable and falsifiable hypotheses, cannot really work when applied to the environment. Instead, scientists develop models – hypotheses, if you will – that set forth well-informed explanations about how various parts of the environment interrelate. Models are then evaluated to see how well their projections correlate with actual, measured data.
With global warming, the principal components of most common models are carbon dioxide (CO2) and global temperatures. The hypothesis is that there is a causal relationship between high concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and increasing temperatures. Certainly, across most of the 20th century there was at least a correlation between these variables. Projecting forward, former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and others have called for significant political actions to limit the devastation these models suggest will come without drastic action.
The problem for Gore and others is that the models they use to justify legislative action are failing. Global temperatures have not climbed as projected, and scientists have noted periods in the 20th century (mainly before the 1930s) where the models do not account for the observed temperatures. So, good climate scientists have been looking for new and improved models that better explain the measured data.