Every day we see new predictions of doom due to “climate change.” Of course, we are pretty well inured to such prophecies since we have lived with them for decades and they haven’t come true. All of the current climate hysteria is based not on observation of actual temperatures, which are benign, but on projections from models that are generated by people who make a living by scaring other people into giving them money.
The thing about the climate models is that we have a lot of experience with them–decades worth–and that experience has conclusively proved that the models are wrong. A model is not evidence of anything. It is a hypothesis. Any hypothesis is supported or invalidated by experiment or observation. A model–a hypothesis–that is contradicted by reality is a bad model, and as such is worthless.
What we are describing here is the scientific method, but climate alarmists bank on the fact that not many people actually understand the scientific method, and therefore continue to fall for their wild predictions. And give them more money.
Climate models have been predicting for a long time that rising temperatures would put our Midwestern agricultural heartland out of business. So what has actually happened? Have the models been proved right, or wrong? Over to Dr. Roy Spencer:
The climate models relied upon by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are known to overestimate warming compared to observations. Depending upon the region (global? U.S.?), temperature metric (surface? deep ocean? lower atmosphere?) and time period (last 150 years? last 50 years?) the average model over-estimate of warming can be either large or small.
But nowhere is it more dramatic than in the U.S. Corn Belt during the growing season (June, July, August).
The following plot shows the 50-year area-averaged temperature trend during 1973-2022 for the 12-state corn belt as observed with the official NOAA homogenized surface temperature product (blue bar) versus the same metric from 36 CMIP6 climate models (red bars, SSP245 emissions scenario, output here).
So, yeah: if you want to know what is going on with respect to climate, don’t pay attention to prophecies of doom based on discredited models. Look at your thermometer.
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