You might think that after decades of wrong predictions, global warming alarmists would back off and try to make their claims more realistic. But you would be wrong. The Science and Environmental Policy Project explains:
[E]fforts by politicians to control carbon dioxide emissions, based on climate model projections / predictions, require models that well describe the greenhouse effect that is occurring now, and how it may change with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Higher resolution computing does not necessarily accomplish this because if the models test poorly against atmospheric data, increasing resolution does not enhance predictive ability.
As John Christy and his colleagues have shown, the only model used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that tracks well with changing atmospheric temperatures is the INM model by the Marchuk Institute of Numerical Mathematics, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow.
This is perhaps related to the fact that the Russian government does not pay out billions of dollars to encourage climate hysteria.
All the American Models are diverging significantly from atmosphere temperature trends, and the trends indicate the divergence is increasing.
Adding to the unrealistic nature of climate modeling is the effort by IPCC leaders to increase calculated effects of a doubling of atmospheric CO2, the so-called equilibrium climate sensitivity. Forty years ago, the Charney Report estimated that a doubling of CO2 will increase global temperatures by 3 degrees C plus or minus 1.5 degree C (about 6 degrees Fahrenheit plus or minus 50%).
The article in Science Magazine describing the effort was a bit vague, but it appears that the effort is to raise the center estimate to 5 degrees C. The effort seems to stem from a modeling conference held by IPCC modelers in Barcelona in March. We wonder why, if the “science was settled” years ago, any change of the center estimate is necessary.
[SEPP] has long criticized the estimate of a 3 degrees C plus or minus 1.5 degree C increase in temperatures from a doubling of CO2 as too high. So, it searched through the links available, including all the slides in the Barcelona conference to uncover any hard evidence to justify such an increase in the greenhouse effect. It found none. It appears that the climate modelers are increasing projections / predictions in response to UN demands for money to be paid into the Green Climate Fund – with an expected annual tribute amount to $100 Billion by 2020. There are many names for such activities, none complementary.
I think the cynical, often-heard injunction to follow the money is often misguided, but in this case it is apt. Global warming alarmism is big business.
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