Three facts about climate change

Their Goldilocks-strategy is one that "conveys neither too much alarm nor too little but instead evokes just the right mix of fear and hope to coax the democratic process into rational engagement with the facts."

So be wary of this blonde bombshell. As Dan Kahan warns here: "her appearance -- the need to engage in ad hoc "fine tuning" to fit a theory to seemingly disparate observations -- is usually a sign that someone doesn't actually have a valid theory."

Fact two: Computer simulations are what-if projections, not what-will predictions based on established and verifiable laws of climate change.

The truth – tweet it far and wide - is that models cannot predict the Earth's climate, nor accurately simulate known patterns of natural variability. They have no genuine predictive power.

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – before a bout of collective amnesia - actually acknowledged that given the climate is a 'coupled non-linear chaotic system', 'long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.' (Third Assessment Report, p774)

NASA and others, however, still push the 'predictive' narrative here, claiming scientists have 'some confidence in a climate model's ability to predict the future.'

And if there is a 'year or years where Earth's average temperature is steady or even falls'? Its scientists, bless them, still expect – 'with some confidence' – the overall trend to be…UP.

Richard Lindzen, MIT Professor of Atmospheric Physics for three decades, had this to say about the global warming argument:

When it comes to unusual climate (which always occurs some place), most claims of evidence for global warming are guilty of the 'prosecutor's fallacy.' For example this confuses the near certainty that if A shoots B, there will be evidence of gunpowder on A's hand - with the assertion that if C has evidence of gunpowder on his hands then C shot B.

With global warming the line of argument is even sillier. It generally amounts to something like if A kicked up some dirt, leaving an indentation in the ground into which a rock fell and B tripped on this rock and bumped into C who was carrying a carton of eggs which fell and broke, then if some broken eggs were found it showed that A had kicked up some dirt. (2009 PP, slide 31):

Yet such issues have not discouraged modellers, governments and eco-activists eager to re-engineer the global economy and redistribute wealth. Even when climate scientists – like Zurich-based Reno Knutti below – publicly admit model flaws and uncertainties (aka 'challenges') it makes no difference to disciples of the alarmist paradigm.

It is common that more research uncovers a picture that is more complicated; thus, uncertainty can grow with time…..Judging the potential success of such a project is speculative, and it may simply take a long time to succeed. However, if the past is a guide to the future then uncertainties in climate change are unlikely to decrease quickly, and may even grow temporarily….It is likely that impact-relevant predictions, for example of extreme weather events, may be even harder to improve. (Knutti, 2012, page 5)

Professor Andrew Pitman, Director of the UNSW ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, knows all about Knutti's dilemma. He was a lead author on the IPCC 3rd and 4th assessment reports and a review editor of the 5^th report (AR5).