Reply To: Might the predictions of climate change be wrong? Or do you believe on faith!

I suspect that a large part of what’s going on is that the system is not fully understood. You cannot accurately model something if you don’t account for everything that effects it, and you can’t do that if you don’t even know everything that effects it.

We just saw (over in Sunday School) that someone has suggested the Sun’s sunspot cycle is much more complicated than previously supposed. A minimum like we had ca. 1700 will have a huge effect on the weather here, and that effect could span decades.

Would it make anthropogenic climate change untrue? Depends on what you mean by that question.

It will swamp the warming trend for a while (so if that’s what you mean by the question, the answer is “yes, it makes it untrue”), so people will be able to point at the cold weather outside and say “see! Damn scientists! I’ll bet they’re wrong about evolution too!” It will be difficult to get them to understand it would be even colder outside were it not for the CO2.

Does human-released CO2 have an upward effect on heat retained by the earth? Undeniably. (So if that’s what you mean when you ask questions about whether AGW is shown falsee, the answer is “no, it’s still true.”) [I will hedge though… some of the effects could cause short term local cooling; e.g., imagine what would happen to Europe if one of those effects were to kill the Gulf Stream.] Does that mean the Earth *will* warm up? Not necessarily, as other factors (such as solar variability) will come into play as well.

Actually an upcoming minimum, if mild instead of as severe as what happened in 1700, might be good news, as it gives us time to bring non-CO2-generating power generation on line. Practical fusion is still a ways off. In spite of constant incremental improvements, batteries still suck too much to make solar truly practical for many applications (plus, widespread solar could effect the biosphere by denying it a good percentage of the sunlight that underpins it). Ideally the two effects (AGW and solar minimum) will cancel, and we have a chance to pursue developing economical alternatives rather than having to run in crisis mode and sink money into methods that must be subsidized.

Meanwhile we in Colorado are enjoying the effects of El Nino. And I do say “enjoying” for the most part; it’s a relief to not have to worry about burning to a crisp the next time some shit-for-brains throws a lit cigarette out his car window. When someone complains about the rain we’ve had here (probably no more than the PNW gets normally, and let’s leave aside the Olympic peninsula, where even concrete grows mold), I tell them it’s better than burning.