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Worse than we thought

19 Feb 2020 | News Roundup

NBC runs a strange variant on the “it’s even worse than the settled science thought” climate story: “Climate change models predicted ocean currents would speed up — but not this soon”. Except they didn’t predict ocean currents would speed up, they said the opposite. For years climate change models and alarmists predicted ocean currents would slow down. Then it sped up and that too was proof of climate change. In every other branch of science predictions are required to come before observed events, and they’re not supposed to predict the opposite of what happens. And if they do, it's not supposed to be used as proof of the theory.

In fact there’s a lot less to this story than meets the headline, as so often. (For instance the ones howling about accelerating sea level rise of about 0.04 mm when the range of uncertainty is 5 mm.) Starting with how nobody knows what the ocean’s currents are doing. It’s not as though climate modelers go forth and measure stuff. Instead, David Whitehouse points out on the Global Warming Policy Forum, they find some proxies, fill in massive gaps with computer models, put the resulting data-like object into other computer models and go “Aha, exactly as we predicted, except for the speed, timing and direction of the change.”

Actually to be fair this study didn’t even say that much. The researchers are totally on board with man-made global warming, kicking off their introduction with “Earth has experienced rapid warming for decades, driven by increased emissions of greenhouse gases”. But when it comes to these pesky, complex ocean currents, the lead author said bluntly “So far observations haven’t shown a trend”.

So more research is needed. And, as NBC quotes a completely unbiased Environmental Defense Fund scientist not involved with this project as adding, more funding for research. For us. But the study’s model does say that in theory, if we knew a lot more than we do and accepted certain assumptions, we’d expect the currents to speed up whereas on other assumptions we’d expect the opposite unless we didn’t.

Even the NBC story eventually stumbles into the dark, admitting that “The puzzling discovery, detailed in a study published last week in the journal Science Advances, highlights that climate change could have wide-ranging effects that are unexpected or severely understudied.” And here we thought the science was “settled”.

Oh wait. It is. NBC also says “The disparity suggests that some climate models may underestimate the effects of global warming.” But none overestimate it, because it’s always worse than it is. “Warmer water will generate hurricanes and extreme weather like that, so there are definitely implications from our work,” said one of the scientists, while an outside observer said “if the ocean system changes significantly, it could directly threaten life on Earth.”

So yes, we are all going to die. QED.

One comment on “Worse than we thought”

  1. The world as we know it is ending soon...and has been for several thousand years.
    Sea levels will always rise and fall with or without our influence.
    Look to Doggerland for proof!

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