Hillsdale College – National Leadership Symposium.
Address by William Happer,
Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus – Princeton
How to Think About Climate Change
56 minutes (1.25 speed works)
That link is to Watt’s Up With That? because the YouTube version has a “Climate Change” “fact check” disclaimer from WikiTedia appended, and I cannot find the lecture on Hillsdale’s site. WUWT deserves a hat tip, in any case.
On the off chance that you won’t autonomically watch the whole thing based on my recommendation, at least check this 2 minutes out.
It’s the next to last question of the Q&A. It’s a core question. Any catastrophist who watches this, if they have half a clue about their own position, will bring it up. If they don’t have that clue, they’re likely to make some ad hominem objection. You’ve been warned.
Happer set the stage for how one must think about CO2 “forcing” to design climate models politically acceptable to the IPCC, but did not address it in his lecture.
I noted the rigor of those IPCC models, and the quality of the data, in December 2009: Prometheus unbound
All the models admit that CO2 alone CANNOT cause the predicted apocalypse. So, CO2 must have secondary catastrophic consequences. All the models take this as given.
It’s the “forcing” assumption: A little bit of warming from CO2 will cause increases in water vapor (by orders of magnitude the most important greenhouse gas). Atmospheric carbon dioxide iteratively “forces” more and more water vapor – creating a feedback loop that fries the planet.
Clouds are part of that “water cycle.” But they aren’t part of the modeling. The modeling that depends on a particular prediction about the water cycle: NASA: We Can’t Model Clouds, So Climate Model Projections Are 100x Less Accurate [than is required for policy decisions]
“Because the uncertainties are so pervasive, NASA concludes that “today’s models must be improved by about a hundredfold in accuracy” if we wish to make climate projections.”
Clouds. They cannot say within 1% certainty that the models’ “forcing” policies of immiseration upon us can be used to support those policies.
TOC noted this 15 years ago.
Science tempers fears on climate change
Posted on September 4, 2006
The link in that has rotted, but I’m sure a copy of the Kyoto ‘Treaty’ is out there on the InterTubes.
I’ve looked at clouds from no sides now…
Posted on June 30, 2007
The first link in that has rotted, but the second one has not. Note “water cycle” – of which clouds are but one phenomenon unknown to IPCC “science.” That’s where the title of the post came from.