Models are initially made by fitting the parameters in your equations to known data you want to explain. But then they have to be tested by inputting other data that wasn’t part of the fitting process and seeing whether they can explain it. Which is relevant to our examination of Professor Qing-Bin Lu’s CRE model proposing that climate change is not driven by the conventional supposed “Greenhouse gases” or GHGs (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide), aka “non-halogen GHGs”, but rather by the halogenated GHGs or “halo-GHGs” such as chlorofluorocarbons once widely used as refrigerants but since phased out. (The halo-GHGs are also implicated in depleting the ozone layer whereas the non-halogen GHGs are not.) Lu developed a model using halo-GHGs and cosmic rays as the only variables and fitted it to changing ozone levels in the stratosphere, and it performed very well. But, he notes, it also explains data on stratospheric temperature changes that were not part of the initial fitting process. Indeed it fits that data so well that there is nothing left over for the non-halogen GHGs to explain. Now let’s see conventional alarmist models explain that finding.

Lu’s verification is quite a test. We already referred to the temperature patterns in the stratosphere in an earlier entry in this series. But in bringing this topic up again Lu makes another point. Models using regular GHGs like CO2 and nitrous oxide predict stratospheric ozone depletion but also predict stratospheric cooling. The CRE model predicts stratospheric ozone depletion but also predicts stratospheric cooling should end and give way to warming. So a key way of determining which model is confirmed is to see what actually happened in the stratosphere, specifically the Lower Stratospheric Temperature or LST. And as noted, it confirms Lu’s model so well there’s almost nothing left over for CO2 and the other non-halogen gases to explain. Nor could they anyway:

This figure shows Lower Stratosphere Temperature from several satellite and weather balloon data sets in red, blue, green and pink, where the red line with squares is a balloon series, and the green and blue ones with triangles and the pink one with circles are from satellites. The orange line going down the middle is the prediction from the CRE model. There are occasional spikes and dips due to volcanoes. But essentially the CRE model nails the leveling off around 2000 and the switch to slight cooling after that so well there is no need for other variables and indeed no room for them.

As Lu notes:

“Based on those model predictions, the excellent agreement between observed data and the CRE equation with no input of non-halogen GHGs has in turn provided proof of almost no greenhouse effects from increasing non-halogen GHGs on global stratospheric climate.”

The evidence is beginning to add up.