"Warming Hole Delayed Climate Change Over Eastern United States," declares the headline at Science Daily, describing the results of new studies from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). It seems that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a regional "warming hole," a/k/a a cold patch, a/k/a a place where the global warming model was an abject failure for many decades.
It seems to me you could as easily say "we found a large area where global warming didn't happen, thus confounding our expectations and making us question our causation theory." Or you might say "particulate pollution appears to be a stronger driver of climate change than the oft-reviled CO2, and in the opposite direction, so now we're really confused about that positive-feedback assumption on which most of our alarming predictions are based." You might even say "particulate pollution paradoxically acts as a benign umbrella to protect industrialized regions from global warming," but what fun would that be? A "Warming Hole" sounds a lot scarier and more interesting. Who wants to crucify industry barons who are only spreading a lovely parasol? And what respectable science journal wants to run a story about counter-evidence for global warming causation theories?
Like most of the announcements in this area, the new report is based on re-jiggered models, in this case a "combination of two complex models of Earth systems." That's terrific. The only thing that inspires more confidence than a complex model is two of them jammed together.
If you can't amaze them with fact...
ReplyDeleteWilliam sends.
It's reached the point that I stop reading after "computer simulations" or "models show that." And yes, the phraseology is always interesting. I'd love to collect some of the "bad science greatest hits" from various media and use them in a writing or history class as negative examples.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Setting aside theFortran for Dummies, unavailable datasets, and adjustments to results jiggering track record of the AGW professionals... It's not the computational modeling itself that stinks, it's the journey of scientific discovery into how all the various pieces fit and interact, over time, posing as settled science that cause me to clutch my pitchfork and torch of sneering skepticism.
ReplyDeleteSettled science my southern hemisphere.
Quick! Alert the Federation before the Cardassians find out about the warmhole!
ReplyDelete...a/k/a a place where the global warming model was an abject failure for many decades.
ReplyDeleteThat pretty much covers the entire surface of the Earth, to include both polar regions, the ocean (to a depth of about 1,500 meters), and the atmosphere up to the tropopause.
There isn't enough computing power in existence to accurately model atmospheric circulation, let alone all the factors involved in "climate change"...
True, but if their paper had focused on all that they'd have had to title it "Entire Earth experiences centuries-long warmhole." It's the new term for inconvenient cooling.
ReplyDeleteThe prophets have sprake: "CO2 is continuing to rise, therefore Teh Climate *must* be getting warmer -- despite all the data that shows the exact opposite."
ReplyDeleteNever underestimate the strength of an idea -- particularly when it's wrong...