Evidence Mounts that Green Tech Is Wiping Out SpeciesScience or Speculation? The Uncomfortable Truth About Climate Proxies
During my time as a graduate student, my advisor and I often steered clear of climate science discussions due to the increasingly politicized and contentious nature of the field.
However, we frequently engaged in philosophical debates about science itself. My advisor had a habit of beginning every qualifying exam with a deceptively simple yet profoundly challenging question: “What is science?” This question wasn’t just a test of knowledge, it was a probing inquiry into the very foundation of our work.
I vividly recall being asked this question during my exam, and though I likely flubbed the answer, it left a deep impression on me. It made me question whether I truly understood the field I was dedicating my life to.
This question stuck with me, particularly when we ventured into discussions about climate science. One paper that consistently came up in our conversations was an analysis of speleothems from Moondyne Cave in southwest Australia.
This study became a focal point because it so clearly illustrated the inherent challenges in reconstructing past climates using proxies. The discrepancies between the speleothem’s isotopic record and actual measured temperature data always left me questioning: How well do we truly understand the climate of the past?
These discussions highlighted the limitations and uncertainties inherent in using proxies like speleothems to reconstruct historical climates, and they raised a fundamental question: Are these reconstructions truly scientific? If science is about creating logically defensible knowledge through rational investigative methods, then how do we reconcile these inconsistencies?
This lingering skepticism about the reliability of proxies has deeply shaped my perspective on climate reconstructions, intensifying my doubts about the certainty with which we claim to understand historical climate variations, and, by extension, modern climate change.
My advisor’s insistence on questioning the very nature of science became even more relevant as I delved deeper into paleoclimatology. His approach forced me to confront the uncomfortable reality that the field, like many others, is not immune to subjectivity, bias, or the pressures of consensus.
This realization deepened my skepticism about the certainty of past climate reconstructions, particularly when they rely on proxies that can be so easily misinterpreted or influenced by factors other than the ones we aim to measure.
The question “What is science?” continues to resonate with me as I explore these complexities, reminding me that true scientific inquiry requires constant questioning, even of the methods and assumptions we hold most dear.
Speleothems, such as stalagmites and stalactites, form over centuries or millennia as water seeps through the soil and drips into caves. As this water evaporates, it leaves behind minerals like calcium carbonate, which build up layer by layer to create these impressive formations.
The key to using speleothems as climate proxies lies in the isotopic composition of the oxygen and carbon within these layers. The ratio of oxygen isotopes (δ18O) in the calcite is thought to reflect the temperature at the time the water was deposited, warmer temperatures should result in lower δ18O values, while cooler temperatures should lead to higher ones.
For a refresher on oxygen isotopes check out…
However, this process is not as straightforward as it might seem. The Moondyne Cave study revealed that the δ18O variations in the stalagmite were not primarily driven by temperature changes
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Reduced Cloud Cover, Not CO2, behind Warming
In 2021 we reported on a pair of studies (here and here) that analysed satellite-measured data and found that clouds were not shielding the Earth’s surface from incoming solar radiation as much as they used to, causing an increase in heat absorption at the surface which accounts for much of the warming experienced in the past few years without reference to ‘greenhouse gases’
Speaking of which, an especially surprising feature of those studies was that while extra solar energy was accumulating at the surface, the total amount of longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere was going up.
Why is that surprising? Because the crux of climate orthodoxy is that more CO2 (plus other ‘GHGS’) in the atmosphere is trapping more of that radiation and letting less of it escape back into space, thus heating the planet.
And now one of the teams is back with a new paper with updated data that shows… more of the same. Over the past 20 years the net inflow of energy into the Earth’s atmosphere has doubled, mostly because more is being absorbed at the Earth’s surface.
But at the same time more is being expelled by the atmosphere, opposite to what would be expected from increased ‘greenhouse gas’ levels. Yep, climate is complicated.
Let’s start by looking back at the second of the studies we mentioned in 2021, by Dubal and Vahrenholt. They presented a remarkable graph of cloudiness and outgoing longwave radiation (meaning thermal, and known as OLR) from 1980 to 2020:
Around 2000 there was a dramatic, mysterious drop in average cloud cover, which the authors attribute to oceanic changes in the Pacific region and which the standard climate models cannot begin to account for.
Since on the whole clouds reflect heat, with less cloud cover the Earth warms up. Meanwhile if CO2 is the “The Thermostat that Controls Earth’s Temperature” as NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies infamously claimed in October 2010, trapping OLR instead of letting it escape, then as carbon dioxide increases in the air the OLR should be dropping.
In fact it has to be. But instead OLR jumped just as cloud cover plummeted, and has continued increasing ever since.
That chart of course only goes up to 2018. But in the new Loeb et al. paper the post-2000 data are shown as follows, with the red line in the top panel showing Absorbed Solar Radiation and the blue line OLR.
The green line in the bottom panel is the net effect of the two in combination, graphed along with gray bars showing the “Multivariate ENSO Index” (a measure of the intensity of an El Niño Southern Oscillation event) to demonstrate that they do not correlate with it:
The top panel shows Absorbed Solar Radiation or ASR, the amount of heat the planet is gaining overall, going up steadily for 25 years, which the authors attribute not only to reduced cover of certain kinds of clouds but also lower reflectiveness of other cloud types, and here again the authors tie it to oceanic changes in the Pacific region.
And the blue line in that panel might seem to show OLR decreasing, except that it’s counterintuitively measured as if you were upside down at the top of the atmosphere, indicating how much is being trapped so the line going down means more heat escaping to space.
What does this mean? We’re not the sort of simpletons who declare ‘the science is settled’, or think one study ends all controversy. We want more data and more analysis.
But the preliminary indication is that if Mother Nature flipped a switch 25 years ago that reduced cloud cover and warmed the planet, it wasn’t us that did it, and presumably she could flip it back any time and we’d see a corresponding cooling, especially since we really don’t know what that switch actually was.
P.S. While we like sunny and warm weather more than cloudy and cool, it would be worth witnessing such a reversal just for the perverse enjoyment of seeing the climate crowd blame that too on ‘greenhouse gases’ and claim they’d actually predicted it all along.
Heck, why not another man-made global cooling scare?
https://principia-scientific.com/reduced-cloud-cover-not-co2-behind-warming/
****************************************UK: Three Just Stop Oil eco-activist are charged with criminal damage after orange soup was thrown at Van Gogh paintings
Three Just Stop Oil eco-activists have been charged with criminal damage after orange soup was thrown at two Van Gogh paintings in the National Gallery on Friday.
Stephen Simpson, 61, of Bradford, West Yorkshire; Phillipa Green, 24, of Penryn, Cornwall; and Mary Somerville, 77, of Bradford, West Yorkshire, will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday, the Metropolitan Police said.
It comes after Just Stop Oil activists poured soup over two Vincent Van Gogh paintings just hours after other members of the group were jailed for damaging the gold frame of the artist's Sunflowers.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Just Stop Oil said: 'BREAKING: 2 VAN GOGH PAINTINGS SOUPED HOURS AFTER PHOEBE AND ANNA SENTENCED.
The National Gallery confirmed on Friday the three activists had been arrested and the paintings remain unharmed.
A statement said: 'At just after 2.30pm this afternoon, three people entered room six of the National Gallery Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibition.
'They appeared to throw a soup-like substance over two works - Sunflowers (1888, National Gallery, London) and Sunflowers (1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art).
'Police were called and three people have been arrested.
'The paintings were removed from display and examined by a conservator and are unharmed.
'We are aiming to reopen the exhibition as soon as possible.'
Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were jailed on Friday after causing as much as £10,000 worth of damage to the artwork's gold-coloured frame when they targeted it at London's National Gallery.
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http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
https://westpsychol.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH -- new site)
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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