What if 30 000+ Scientists are Right and Not CO2 but Something else Causes Climate Change?

The ques­tion is not "Is the cli­mate chang­ing?" or "is it get­ting warmer?". These are fairly uncon­tro­ver­sial ques­tions and less impor­tant than these:

1. What if .…not CO2 but other human fac­tors are much more sig­nif­i­cant to our climate?
2. What if .…the small  but many effects of hun­dreds of our activ­i­ties (asso­ci­ated with changes in land­scapes, de-forestation, pol­lu­tion of land and water)  are stronger dri­vers of global cli­mate than CO2?
3. What if .…nat­ural mech­a­nisms dwarf mankind's abil­ity to change the climate?

Many of us "CO2 blamers"  are cur­rently blam­ing CO2  for heat­ing up the planet — but what if .…we get it wrong and it's some­thing else?

What if  we dis­cover it too late or never because we did not look any fur­ther because we ran out of resources look­ing for it? We could have used our resources to limit the impact of humans in gen­eral (pol­lu­tion, toxic waste.. ) or even think seri­ously about chang­ing the eco­nomic sys­tem -  instead we messed up to suf­fer the con­se­quences of putting all eggs in one basket.

Surely, our sci­en­tists would not make such a mis­take. Surely,  these smart and well-educated peo­ple would say clearly if they didn't know the real cause for cli­mate change or if there are pos­si­bly other causes man-made or not. Surely, we can trust the sci­en­tific method. The sci­en­tific method can­not be mis­guided by opin­ions, since all that mat­ters using this method is hard repro­ducible data and the­o­ries sug­gest­ing cau­sa­tion.  And of course, data and the­ory can be both ver­i­fied and fal­si­fied.

Thou­sands of sci­en­tists can­not pos­si­bly con­spire into bend­ing the sci­en­tific method in the same direc­tion — so why should we not trust the sci­en­tific method here? Why believe the "CO2 defend­ers" who (we are told) are the minority?

I believe, the prob­lem lies in the fol­low­ing  assump­tions when it comes to the CO2 issue. Many of which are often falsely believed to be clearly true:

Assump­tion 1:  It would be very dif­fi­cult to manip­u­late most sci­en­tists to favour a spe­cific out­come. (not true)

Assump­tion 2:  The green­house effect can be  mea­sured and repro­duced both in the lab­o­ra­tory and the real atmos­phere. (not true)

Assump­tion 3:  There is enough detailed under­stand­ing of all impor­tant processes that drive cli­mate. (not true)

Assump­tion 4:  If sci­en­tist agree with a the­ory, then it must be true — or at least it can't be that wrong. (not true)

 

Assump­tion 1:  It would be very dif­fi­cult to manip­u­late most sci­en­tists to favour a spe­cific outcome.

In a capitalist/corporatist eco­nomic sys­tem almost all sci­en­tists will con­sciously or sub­con­sciously focus their inten­tion, time, energy and inter­pre­ta­tion of data towards an out­come that is ben­e­fi­cial for them. The scarier the out­come the more atten­tion by the press, the eas­ier they can pub­lish their research in high-profile jour­nals, the more recog­ni­tion, equip­ment and fund­ing they can secure. The more sci­en­tist agree with a scary result the stronger it is regarded as true and the more money will flow from gov­ern­ments and corporations.

A bias towards a result like "mankind is dan­ger­ously over­heat­ing the planet" is rather expected and should not sur­prise any­one. This mes­sage of fear is of course also what sells many times more news­pa­pers than a no prob­lem mes­sage. I can highly rec­om­mend the book "Bad Sci­ence" by Ben Goldacre which deals with var­i­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal aspects like pub­li­ca­tion bias in par­tic­u­lar within phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal research.

In a com­plex mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary issue like cli­mate change it will not even be nec­es­sary to manip­u­late most researchers as it would be very dif­fi­cult to accu­rately deter­mine the opin­ion of thou­sands of researchers any­way. Pub­li­ca­tion and other bias is only an exam­ple of the temp­ta­tion to bend research results — so there is always an incen­tive towards fear mon­ger­ing amongst sci­en­tists — not unlike jour­nal­ists and politi­cians. In other words, there will always be a good sup­ply of "impor­tant research" that scares many people.

Assump­tion 2:  The green­house effect can be  mea­sured and repro­duced both in the lab­o­ra­tory and the real atmosphere.

In cli­mate sci­ence the "green­house effect" means that

1. CO2 absorbs and emits some long wave radi­a­tion back to Earth's sur­face thereby increas­ing our planet's sur­face and indi­rectly also its atmos­pheric temperature
2. this small tem­per­a­ture increase means the air can now hold more water vapour in the long term. Water vapor itself is a much stronger and more abun­dant green­house gas than CO2 and can now cause addi­tional warm­ing. The warm­ing ocean releases also more CO2, fur­ther ampli­fy­ing the warm­ing albeit on a much slower time scale (hun­dreds of years).

There are also very good efforts to  mea­sure the back radi­a­tion from CO2 to the sur­face as well as accu­rate absorp­tion data of atmos­pheric CO2 from satel­lites in space.

What I miss here, how­ever, is a lab­o­ra­tory exper­i­ment show­ing the heat trap­ping effect (not just absorp­tion) of CO2 with some quan­ti­ta­tive data.

Also, con­sid­er­ing the alleged threat to the world that jus­ti­fies bil­lions of research dol­lars, a high res­o­lu­tion absorp­tion spec­trum with absorp­tion coef­fi­cients of CO2 is sur­pris­ingly hard to find. More­over, the cal­cu­la­tion or mea­sure­ment that arrives at about 2w/m2 radia­tive forc­ing for CO2 would be inter­est­ing to see. Also accord­ing to the­ory the effect of any new CO2 added should be very small as it absorbs already almost as much as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble. Yet CO2 blamers say that they can still mea­sure sig­nif­i­cant increases of radi­a­tion from CO2.This sounds like they admit there is some impor­tant under­stand­ing of impor­tant processes missing.

Please let me know if you find any­thing I am miss­ing here.

An even big­ger prob­lem I have with 2.  above: the ampli­fi­ca­tion through water vapour feed­back and CO2.

I am not aware of any (seri­ous) repro­ducible exper­i­ments show­ing that a green­house gas can warm earth and to what extend — nei­ther in a lab­o­ra­tory nor in real life. With water vapour or with­out. All I can find is cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence of some com­po­nents of the effect.

Assump­tion 3:  There is enough detailed under­stand­ing of all impor­tant processes that drive climate.

A lot is known about the phys­i­cal fac­tors dri­ving cli­mate. We know that the sun is the fuel and tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ences on the sur­face are the "engines" to drive cli­mate. We know clouds at dif­fer­ent heights have dif­fer­ent effects, they can either cool or warm the sur­face this also depends on if it is day or night. Evap­o­rat­ing water can act as a ther­mo­stat by cool­ing e.g. a warm­ing ocean sur­face.  More­over, water vapor can con­den­sate or freeze to release heat and form dif­fer­ent types of clouds at dif­fer­ent heights or snow or rain depend­ing on things like moun­tain ranges, sur­face tem­per­a­ture, wind direc­tion and strength etc.

Weather has been described as an almost chaotic sys­tem where a but­ter­fly in Brazil could the­o­ret­i­cally trig­ger a tor­nado in the US.

Hence, I would think, to under­stand cli­mate on a level where 0.03ppm CO2 in the atmos­phere mat­ter  we need to know at least how the much stronger mech­a­nisms work, like the water cycle and cloud formation/effects, changes in reflec­tion prop­er­ties on Earth's sur­face or three-dimensional impacts of moun­tain ranges. Also the car­bon cycle (cre­ation and absorp­tion of CO2) is highly com­plex and influ­enced even by small sea crea­tures in the oceans not just by us humans breath­ing and burn­ing fuel or the pho­to­syn­the­sis­ing plants or volcanoes.

In par­tic­u­lar the lack of quan­ti­ta­tive under­stand­ing of the water cycle (and its cou­pling to CO2, wind etc) makes me doubt that any­one can seri­ously pre­dict cli­mate changes. Even a sim­ple earth model with a mul­ti­coloured smooth sur­face exposed to a sun sim­u­la­tor would likely go beyond what could be under­stood, repro­duced and predictable.

To me the con­cept of cre­at­ing an aver­age tem­per­a­ture of earth (70% of the sur­face is water) seems fun­da­men­tally flawed. Equally trou­ble­some I find the sim­pli­fi­ca­tion that Earth absorbs and emits like a black or grey homo­ge­neous body while most processes are dri­ven by tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ences on the surface.

There is a long list of known com­pli­ca­tion and prob­a­bly even more unknown ones. In my opin­ion humans are a long way from under­stand­ing cli­mate to make any mean­ing­ful predictions.

Assump­tion 4:  If sci­en­tist agree with a the­ory, then it must be true — or at least it can't be that wrong

There is no cli­mate the­ory like the the­ory of light or quan­tum mechan­ics. There are experts in dozens of dif­fer­ent fields who accu­mu­late and share knowl­edge all of which is essen­tial to the com­mon goal of under­stand­ing the whole thing: Climate.

In my opin­ion, as a physi­cist, the "cli­mate sci­ence" (like other out-of-reach dis­ci­plines) can at the very best only be called a soft or semi sci­ence. This is because much of what it is about can nei­ther be accu­rately ver­i­fied (tested) nor fal­si­fied (proven wrong) with cur­rent knowl­edge and tech­nol­ogy. This is mostly because para­me­ters and much of the physics are nei­ther known suf­fi­ciently nor could they be con­trolled (repro­duced) sufficiently.

The sci­en­tific method is the foun­da­tion of a hard sci­en­tific dis­ci­pline. Among other things it requires a prac­ti­cal oppor­tu­nity of fal­si­fi­ca­tion and ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the the­ory (hypoth­e­sis) in ques­tion.  With­out this the the­ory can not be dis­tin­guished from a "believe", such as the believe in a holy god. I can­not prove the exis­tence of a god, nor can I prove he doesn't exist. Hence believ­ing in the exis­tence of a god is a "believe" and not even a sci­en­tific the­ory and far away from a con­firmed theory.

A con­firmed the­ory that is also part of a par­a­digm of knowl­edge may be the high­est level of under­stand­ing in Sci­ence. such a con­firmed the­ory is per­haps the clos­est we can get to stat­ing facts — but good sci­en­tist will point out that even these facts can change or dis­ap­pear as it hap­pened many times in history.

Note, that this does not mean believ­ing some­thing is a waste of time — it may well have real life effects — and these things may exist. How­ever believes can­not claim the same level of reli­a­bil­ity as a con­firmed the­ory in science.

In cli­mate sci­ence, much of pos­si­bly impor­tant physics is either totally unknown or only partly under­stood and had to be sim­pli­fied con­sid­er­ably (clouds, water vapour feed­back, effect of the sun on cloud for­ma­tion etc..) to be plugged into com­puter models.

So, in cli­mate "sci­ence" or other "soft" sci­ences it should not even mat­ter if there is a con­sen­sus of researchers sup­port­ing a the­ory or not.

Only in soft sci­ences the issue of a con­sen­sus amongst researchers is dis­cussed. This is exactly because many the­o­ries in soft sci­ences can­not be fal­si­fied and barely ver­i­fied. There­fore opin­ions — not facts rule. Opin­ions then can be traded, pur­chased, ignored or ridiculed — in other words — manip­u­lated by who­ever has the power (like in many real life "democracies").

On the other hand, con­sen­sus is not even a seri­ous topic in hard sci­ences (that use the strict sci­en­tific method; e.g. semi­con­duc­tor physics). Hard sci­ences are about hard proof that A causes B.  Cor­re­la­tion is not enough. Repro­ducibil­ity and con­trolled exper­i­ments rule in the hard sci­ences. This is why hard sci­ences are in prac­tice much more reli­able than a demo­c­ra­tic / major­ity opin­ion based deci­sion that could be manip­u­lated or affected by self censorship.

This may also the rea­son why soft sci­ences are now call­ing for a more relaxed def­i­n­i­tion of the sci­en­tific the­ory. Most peo­ple are not aware that hard and soft sci­ences are dif­fer­ent ani­mals and mixed up in one word "science".

Cor­po­rate media and the mar­ket­ing indus­try love to (falsely) asso­ciate the author­ity of hard sci­ence with the increas­ing num­ber of soft sci­ences. We all like to believe doc­tors in white coats on TV have the author­ity to tell us that swal­low­ing a chem­i­cal is safe and good for you. Unfor­tu­nately med­i­cine, like all life related dis­ci­plines, is a soft sci­ence at least as much as cli­mate science.

What is inter­est­ing in the CO2 debate is that most peo­ple, even many of those trained in sci­ence, have not even looked for any evi­dence and are there­fore CO2 blamers (not because they saw evi­dence). On the other hand, I sus­pect most of the CO2 defend­ers have at least look at the kind of evidence.

There are over 30 000 sci­en­tists in the USA alone who have prob­a­bly been look­ing but can­not see any hard evi­dence that man-made CO2 can cause sig­nif­i­cant warming.

Until I dis­cover evi­dence to make most of the above assump­tions true I will likely remain a CO2 defender (and a defender of hard sci­ence try­ing to come up with a less mis­lead­ing label for soft sci­ences; I think the word sci­ence should be replaced). I also urge read­ers to tell me of any evi­dence I may have missed.

Note: As should be obvi­ous from my other posts, I am a strong oppo­nent of cor­po­ratism, pol­lu­tion and in par­tic­u­lar the con­sump­tion of finite resources like oil and coal. How­ever, I also believe it is far more dan­ger­ous tack­ling cli­mate change by attack­ing the wrong cul­prit and thereby miss the chance to "save mankind" by address­ing pos­si­bly far more impor­tant issues.

More impor­tant and urgent issues mankind is fac­ing are:

• con­duct inde­pen­dent research into find­ing other pos­si­ble causes for any kind of cli­mate change or con­firm­ing the green­house effect in a laboratory
• dis­cussing, study­ing and prepar­ing to move on from a high con­sump­tion based eco­nomic sys­tem that cre­ates increas­ing inequal­ity and debt to a sus­tain­able one favour­ing a smaller dif­fer­ence between all human beings
• remov­ing the profit motif from news report­ing and polit­i­cal posi­tions (real­is­tic com­pen­sa­tion for politicians)
• intro­duc­ing a real­is­ti­cally low upper limit for all salaries. Salaries over e.g. 100 000€/year or stock options  are really only legal bribes to sell your soul in the name of your com­pany — in par­tic­u­lar in pol­i­tics and news report­ing business
• fade out adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing as much as pos­si­ble. This would be a key ele­ment to stop con­sumerism as well as over­sup­ply of prod­ucts, labour and wasted resources on the planet

In my opin­ion research should focus mostly on proof­ing the the­o­ret­i­cal con­cept that green­house gases can warm Earth's sur­face and to what extent. Ide­ally this should be done with a repro­ducible exper­i­ment in a lab­o­ra­tory with rea­son­able con­trol of parameters.

There is also an extra twist related to the finan­cial and envi­ron­men­tal motifs by var­i­ous lobby groups. This is cer­tainly an inter­est­ing but also com­plex issue which I like to dis­cuss in a sep­a­rate post in the future.

OK. My short answer about the motifs is:
Oil cor­po­ra­tions are spon­sor­ing a tiny frac­tion of cli­mate research com­pared to gov­ern­ment bod­ies like the USA. Cli­mate research has become a huge busi­ness employ­ing a huge num­ber of sci­en­tists world wide. Car­bon trad­ing is a huge busi­ness for global bro­kers like Gold­man Sachs.
Car­bon will be the biggest com­mod­ity mar­ket on earth, mov­ing tril­lions of dol­lars, yearly, between banks thereby fur­ther delay­ing the inevitable col­lapse of a debt/fiat money based eco­nomic sys­tem. Poor nations in e.g. Africa may not be able to burn coal and oil to cre­ate cost-effective energy but instead will leave their share to the wealth­ier nations — those that can afford to pay for the "license". The US so far does not even need a license. Poor nations may need to buy solar pan­els and wind gen­er­a­tors from China, Europe and the US instead of using and ben­e­fit­ing from their own resources.
A handy sum­mary of the most crit­i­cal issues (lack of sci­en­tific evi­dence and the imbal­ance of fund­ing and motifs) can be found here.

I am deeply impressed by the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment that recently agreed to a pub­lic hear­ing of CO2 crit­i­cal sci­en­tists. This should be nor­mal but has not occurred  in many other nations in Europe or abroad — to my knowledge.