Kerry Jackson recently scribbled a piece on climate change for Investor’s Business Daily (see http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/global-warming-the-imminent-crisis-that-never-arrives/). His point is that predictions about climate warming are often wrong and scientists have allegedly admitted that there really has been a pause in the warming and that the climate models failed to predict it. Jackson is wrong on every count.
He begins by listing some predictions that supposedly have not come true. First problem here is that the people he names as the “predictors”, such as Al Gore, the Guardian newspaper, and the French Foreign Minister Lauren Fabius, are not scientists. Why doesn’t Jackson identify some well-known scientists and list specific predictions? In addition, some of the predictions he lists have a not been proven wrong. He lists some claims that fall in the category of “if we don’t act soon, we’ll face catastrophe.” Yet, such claims have not been proven false and won’t be proven false, if ever, for years. The danger of not acting now is that the climate is like an aircraft carrier. If it’s on a collision course, you must start changing the path immediately. You can’t say, “Well, we haven’t collided with anything yet, so why do anything now?”
But Jackson’s two biggest errors come when he says that scientists now admit there was a pause and that the models failed to predict it. The so-called pause, according to all the evidence taken together, did not happen. There was a period of slower growth in surface temperatures but there was continued gain in heat in the ocean. So, when you consider the heat content of the oceans, the land, and the atmosphere, the trend has continued upwards. There has never been a “leveling off” as Scott Pruitt claimed. Second, the models are not meant to predict short-term variations in climate. If you are examining a 15- or 20-year period, you’re simply not looking at the time spans that models are aimed at. Their goal is to show long-term trends, and in this they have been quite accurate. If you are expecting the models to show such short-term variability, you do not understand what the models are designed for and your criticism of them is without merit.
The deniers love to criticize the models as being imperfect. However, scientists readily admit that they are not perfect. Given the complexity and scale of the climate system along with the fact that we can’t have sensors placed every few feet apart all over the world and atmosphere, it’s not surprising that models will offer an approximation of reality. What scientists can and will continue to do is to revise the models by incorporating more and more data, and a more and more sophisticated understanding of the forces that affect climate.
Santer et al. were doing what scientists are supposed to do. They saw an interesting, but unexplained disparity between the warming rates in the land surface temperature data and the satellite data for the troposphere and they presented some hypotheses regarding these disparities. On the other hand, people like Kerry Jackson do no science, aren’t really trying to understand the science, but rather want to quibble and carp in order to sow doubt. Their actions are poorly argued but there are enough of them all over the internet that they have a malicious effect. The fossil fuel industry gets to rake in a few more billion dollars and the rest of us will pay.
