Why Global Warming Is Not Irrefutable
It really is as easy as 1-2-3.
There are 3 main arguments alarmists/opportunists use for global warming: climate models predict it, records of past climate show it was globally cooler, and scientific consensus. All 3 arguments are fundamentally flawed.
1. It is fundamentally mathematically impossible for climate models to predict climate.
Chaos Theory's Butterfly Effect is usually described as the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Japan resulting in a hurricane in the Atlantic. This is not artistic hyperbole, this is mathematical reality.
Climate is a quintessential example of this phenomenon.
Unless climate models do the absolutely impossible and account for even a butterfly's wings flapping, particularly when they are initialized, and then calculate with infinite precision, they can not predict climate.
Climate models are just more complex/chaotic weather models, which have a theoretical maximum predictive ability of just 10 days into the future. Predicting climate decades or even just years into the future is a lie, albeit a useful one for publication and funding.
Qualified climate modelers know all this but almost all won't publically admit it out of fear for their careers.
See More Reasons To Doubt Climate Models Can Predict Climate.
2. Climate proxies are far too inaccurate, unreliable, and sparse to prove anything about past global climate, e.g. that it was colder.
Climate proxies are things like tree rings and ice cores. Given old methods and instruments, even historical climate measurements have to be considered climate proxies.
They are called climate "proxies" because they are substitutes for real climate measurements. Obviously, there are no instruments in these climate proxies so how is it done? The climate measurements have to be inferred from loosely-related characteristics of the proxy, e.g. temperature from tree ring widths. This usually involves primitive modeling or misuse of statistics. It is thus inaccurate and unreliable well beyond what is required for the conclusions drawn.
Climate proxies are very sparse. A single measurement often has to represent thousands of square miles or more, particularly in remote ocean regions, and is usually not representative of that area (e.g. sampled trees are not chosen randomly) or doesn't even have a knowable bias. A single temperature for the Earth averaged from these measurements is meaningless and absurd.
The reason for using climate proxies is that there is nothing else, which is not a good reason ... unless you have to get published or funded.
3. Scientific consensus is not proof of global warming, just publication and funding bias, and has often been used as proof of theories later shown to be wrong.
Scientific consensus = all published research shows global warming.
Climate model/proxy research that does not show global warming will not get published or funded because of:
- Non-publication of negative results (no global warming found)
- Fearful self-censorship
- Conflict of interest (a need to get results, regardless of validity, that further careers)
- Corrupt and/or unqualified scientists
- Censorship by consensus scientists in a fundamentally-flawed peer review process
- Corruption of climate science overall (e.g., see Corrupt German Climate Science)