A New Global Warming Alarmist Tactic

Real Temperature Measurements Don't Matter

By James Taylor

What do you do if you are a global warming alarmist and real-world temperatures do not warm as much as your climate model predicted? Here’s one answer: you claim that your model’s propensity to predict more warming than has actually occurred shouldn’t prejudice your faith in the same model’s future predictions. Thus, anyone who points out the truth that your climate model has failed its real-world test remains a “science denier.”

Climate scientist Roger Pielke Sr. reports on his webpage that he recently reviewed a paper that had the following assertion, “A global climate model that does not simulate current climate accurately does not necessarily imply that it cannot produce accurate projections.” (!)
This, clearly, is the difference between “climate science” and “science deniers.” Those who adhere to “climate science” wisely realize that defining a set of real-world parameters or observations by which we can test and potentially falsify a global warming theory is irrelevant and so nineteenth century. Modern climate science has gloriously progressed far beyond such irrelevant annoyances as the Scientific Method.

“Science deniers,” meanwhile, are caught in the tired, stale ideas of the past. Everybody just knows that we must act now to avert a global warming crisis, so why do deniers cling to such outdated notions as testing a theory against real-world observations, and forcing scientists to explain any discrepancies between their theories and reality? Heck, if they are going to force us to do that, they might as well force us to prove that the earth is not flat.

As Pielke commented about the new tactic, “[I]f a global climate model cannot simulate current climate, as well as changes in the climate system accurately, it cannot produce accurate projections of the climate in the coming decades.”

And there you have the designated goalposts that so infuriate global warming alarmists. Global warming alarmists create a computer model programmed to assume that carbon dioxide drives all or most of recent warming. The model then creates future projections based on the programmed assumptions, and the model predictably forecasts a climate Armageddon. The projected steep temperature increases, however, fail to occur, which is embarrassing to the alarmists. So they go back and tweak – dare I say like an Etch-a-Sketch – all the factors in their original model except their carbon dioxide assumptions, until they can finally spit out an amount of recent warming that coincides with the minimal warming that had actually occurred. They say that this new model is certainly accurate, and that rapid temperature increases are certain to occur soon under status quo carbon dioxide emissions.

However, real-world temperatures continue to rise much less than the revised computer model projects, so they go back and do the Etch-a-Sketch exercise all over again. But the same results occur over and over and over again.

Rather than getting a clue that perhaps their overly alarmist carbon dioxide assumptions are the reason why their models continually fail, they eventually throw their hands up in the air and say that real world observations don’t matter. Only our computer models matter, and if you don’t believe our computer models’ alarmist projections, you are attacking climate scientists, attacking climate science itself, and should be shunned as a science denier.

Perhaps you are offended by this newly asserted alarmist logic. If you are, I can assure you that you will be even more offended by the alarmist logic discussed in next week’s column.