Anyone who thinks The Science™ of climate change is “settled” has not only never read the serious climate science literature, they’ve almost certainly never talked to a great many climate scientists.
What the legacy media and politicians serve up to you as “climate science” is, in fact, cherry-picked and highly politicised nonsense designed to push a deeply flawed narrative. The “IPCC reports” you read about in Stuff, the New Zealand Herald or the ABC are in fact nothing more than press releases generated by the IPCC’s “summary for policy-makers”, which is mostly cobbled-together junk peddled by political hacks and grifting environmental groups.
In the actual scientific literature, on the other hand, the real science is very far from “settled” — as it should be. Among scientists, there is considerable disagreement about a great deal — as it should be.
Occasionally, some of them are honest — and daring — enough to speak out. Physicist and former Obama administration scientist, Steve Koonin, for instance, has written the admirable Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. Japanese climate modeller Nakamura Mototaka, published Confessions Of A Climate Scientist: The Global Warming Hypothesis Is An Unproven Hypothesis, which is scathing about the limitations of climate models when it comes to the real world.
More recently, Bjorn Stevens, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, the principal German climate science research and modelling centre, has spoken out about one of the most damning limitations of climate modelling: clouds.
Stevens knows a bit about clouds:
He is very well known for his work on climate sensitivity, aerosols and, particularly, clouds. Professor Stevens is an excellent scientist and a key figure in the climate science establishment. He is joint lead co-ordinator of the World Climate Research Programme’s Grand Challenge on Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity, and led the 2015 Ringberg Castle workshop that kicked off its climate sensitivity arm.
Stevens, in an interview in Die Zeit with that rare beast, a science journalist who’s actually a scientist, physicist Max Rauner, had some harsh criticism for his colleagues. He accuses them of being fear-mongers who “comb through the specialist literature for the most alarming stories”, and that their knowledge of clouds is little better than “children’s book” stuff.
What do the clouds do when the climate warms up? This is what Bjorn Stevens, director at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, is researching. His research group simulates clouds in climate models. When it comes to cloud issues, the World Climate Report relies heavily on his expertise. At the moment, however, Stevens would like to rewrite the world climate report.
Stevens reiterates what is well-known in sceptic circles: climate models simply cannot model clouds accurately. This has enormous implications for projections of “dangerous warming”.
Clouds are tricksters. Even if the contours are sharp, the cloud structure is more like that of puff pastry. Nevertheless, many scientists use the children’s book clouds as a guide because they are easier to simulate. This makes the climate models less accurate.
A cloud the size of an old building can only hold a liter of water.
If you distributed all the condensed water in the atmosphere evenly around the globe, you would get a water film that is only two tenths of a millimeter thick.
Nonetheless, as flooded Australians are currently aware, clouds can have a huge effect on the climate.
Flooding occurs because clouds can be huge and air circulation during storms constantly replenishes the water. And they affect the climate because they are made up of a huge number of droplets that interact with sunlight and thermal radiation. A very large cloud has almost as many droplets as there are stars in the universe. And there are many clouds.
The big question, of course, is just what effect clouds have on the climate: are they a warming or a cooling factor? The answer is: both.
All clouds have a cooling effect by reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth’s surface. And all clouds have a warming effect by absorbing the earth’s infrared radiation so it doesn’t escape into space – the greenhouse effect. The balance sheet shows: Water-rich low clouds over the tropical ocean have the greatest cooling effect and low-water ice clouds at high altitudes have the strongest warming effect. Overall, the cooling effect is greater.
That’s not what the alarmists want us to believe, though. They claim that global warming will cause clouds to evaporate and lay the Earth bare to the full force of the Sun. “That’s nonsense,” says Stevens.
If you look closely, the most alarming stories often don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny […] Too many children’s book clouds, not enough real clouds.
Climate Etc
In Stevens’ blunt assessment, the contribution of clouds to global warming today is exactly zero.
That has dramatic consequences for claims of “dangerous warming”. In fact, an accurate zero contribution by clouds to climate sensitivity would shave nearly a whole degree (C) off projections of warming.
