Concluding our series on Professor Qing-Bin Lu’s CRE Model of climate change we discuss the sixth data point that Lu says shows his model does better than the IPCC’s CO2 model for explaining climate change. In this case it is three data points, all of which we have already mentioned but which Lu returns to once again: the Arctic, the Antarctic and the UK Central England Temperature series. In their own ways they provide three unique tests of the rival models, and the CRE model succeeds where the CO2 model fails.

The Central England Temperature (CET) record is useful because, Lu notes, the UK experienced a lot of air pollution during its history, but the pollution levels have fallen a lot since the 1950s. This means the effects of aerosol cooling have worn off and the effects of CO2 warming should now be predominant. The CET record shows a rapid warming from about 1975 to 2000 but a leveling-off after that:

This evidence fits the CRE model. But not the CO2 + aerosol model which predicts ongoing warming that so far has not shown up.

The polar regions are the other test areas, partly because of some significant contrasts between them. For one thing, the Arctic is mostly ocean while the Antarctic is mainly land. For another, the Arctic experienced some air pollution prior to 2000 so aerosols affected the climate there, while Antarctica is isolated enough that it likely never experienced much in the way of aerosols. And finally the Antarctic sea ice boundary has hardly changed at all so there is no confounding effect of sea ice loss opening the ocean surface where previously there was ice, whereas the Arctic has experienced sea ice loss so the warming-amplifying effect of ice retreat is expected to affect the record there.

Putting these effects together, the CO2 model nevertheless predicts steady warming in all three locations, while the CRE model predicts leveling off and transition to cooling after 2000, except in the Arctic where the loss of sea ice suggests coastal warming will continue for a while yet. And yet again, these patterns are the ones currently shown in the data:

Thus three regions each with different characteristics provide support for the CRE model, and a contrast with the IPCC model, and will provide decisive evidence over the next few years.

That survey concludes our look at the CRE model of Professor Lu. But like him and his colleagues, we will continue to watch the progress of temperatures around the world in the coming years to see whether it or the IPCC CO2 model prevails. And shouldn’t everyone, given how startling and apparently persuasive his paper is? If you were not absolutely convinced a priori that CO2 was the control knob on the global thermostat, would you not be sufficiently intrigued as to check it out?

If not, if instead you're sufficiently outraged to try to stamp it out, even if only by ignoring it, don’t worry. Someone else will have a look. And in the end the data will decide, as it should, not politicians or journalists or activists touting a non-existent consensus or trying to enforce one.