March 2015

Scott Adams is trying to figure out which side of politics is less rational. But he assumes the answer to his question before he even gets started when he wrote:

Climate Change Claim 1: Human activity plus natural factors are changing the climate in ways that could be calamitous.

Verdict: True. The overwhelming majority of credible scientists agree.

Scott needs a lesson in science. I replied:

Your climate change claim 1 verdict assumes that one side is right and the other wrong, and it does so on the basis of popular consensus, which plays no part in science (so I won't mention the 30,000 scientists who signed a letter saying otherwise). Science is built, not on consensus but on evidence, hypotheses, and testing. Let me illustrate by summarising the entire global warming debate in a few sentences..

The global warming theory is that doubling CO2 will cause something "around" a degree C warming. A bit more, a bit less, but something thereabouts.

Everyone agrees. Everyone sane, that is, both alarmists and skeptics alike.

But the alarmist theory goes on as follows: Yes, but that ~1C will cause more evaporation from the oceans, and H2O is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so the 1C gets multiplied 2,3, 4, 6, you name it, times, causing catastrophic warming of 4C, 6C, whatever hairy scary figure you care to pick.

That's it. The difference is between skeptics who say CO2 causes 1C warming and alarmists who say it causes a multiplied amount limited only by how frightened they want you to be today.

So, how to test it?