Minor Thoughts from me to you

Warren Meyer points out Richard Lindzen's Congressional testimony as a great example of the central problem with global warming models.

Here are two statements that are completely agreed on by the IPCC. It is crucial to be aware of their implications.

1. A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. All models project more warming, because, within models, there are positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, and these feedbacks are considered by the IPCC to be uncertain.

2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2is less than 1C. The higher sensitivity of existing models is made consistent with observed warming by invoking unknown additional negative forcings from aerosols and solar variability as arbitrary adjustments.

Given the above, the notion that alarming warming is 'settled science' should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC. 4

Did you catch that? Even assuming that all of the warming that occurred from 1900-2000 was due to human activities (a very dubious assertion to begin with), the climate still isn't as sensitive to increases in CO2 as the climate models predicate. The climate models have to add in additional fudge factors to get the results that the "scientists" want to see.

Until that changes -- until there is hard evidence that the climate really is that sensitive to increases in CO2 -- I'll continue to oppose any kind of carbon caps, carbon taxes, or any other attempt by the government to control how we generate and use energy.