Climate Misinformation
Knowing what science says about climate is more difficult than ever
Last week I gave a talk on “Climate Misinformation” at the invitation of the National Association of Scholars. Above you can see my full lecture followed by a lengthy Q&A. You can find here some additional commentary on the talk and (for paid subscribers) my complete slide deck.
I have opened up the comments on this post to everyone. I am happy to have questions and comments, and I welcome alternative or critical views to the data and arguments of my talk. All are welcome! I will be happy to engage actively in the comments as well.
A few things I wish were mentioned.
1. Our temperature record is sparse and highly uncertain right up until the satellite era and the mere fact of how much the planet has warmed since 1750 or 1850 is anyone’s guess for the mere fact that the whole planet wasn’t observed. An entire continent larger than Europe was shrouded in the fog of mystery until 1957. In-filling this shitty sparse data only adds uncertainty. Just get try to get any two scientists to agree what the preindustrial global average temperature was (not stated as an anomaly) let alone if that’s the year 1650 or 1750 or 1850. Seems pretty stupid to be concerned about global warming when nobody can agree on a baseline.
2. The increase in global average temperature stems from higher lows, not higher highs, because a daily temperature is (stupidly) just the average of the high and low. Higher lows generally means higher nighttime temperatures, not extremely hot weather as painter by the media and activists. Is anyone seriously concerned that Siberia is 2°C warmer at 3AM?
3. Since 1978, the global average temperature trend has been +1.3°C per century, and there has been no trend in global average temperatures in 8 years. This is better than any climate model is spitting out and everyone should be talking about this.
4. Carbon sinks are increasing and the planet is greening. We may never reach 560ppm for the mere fact that life in our oceans and on land is loving the extra CO2.
5. Clouds and other climate forcings are utterly ignored. A 10% change in cloud albedo is bigger than the ENTIRE THEORETICAL FORCING OF DOUBLING CO2. How do we know the warming we’ve seen isn’t from cloud changes? We don’t. And why? Because we didn’t have satellites in 1850 or 1950. We have zero clue what the cloud albedo was prior to satellites.
6. Climate models suck. They can’t do the job the pretend to do. They make errors in 1 year of simulations that dwarf the entire theoretical forcing of 2XCO2. Even if alarmists were right, their models couldn’t prove them right. This is not science.
Roger, can you point to any professional society or organization that is exhibiting leadership in demanding integrity in climate science?