Hello Ivan,
We don’t seem to be able to agree about the uncharted territory CO₂ chart, so let’s take a step back to see what we disagree about and to examine our premises.
You seem to expect from me to prove that CO₂ concentration made spikes in the past similar to the one it’s making today. I cannot prove that. On the other hand, I seem to expect from you to prove that it did not make spikes, which of course you can’t prove either. Which one of us has to provide proof?
Likewise, you may be expecting from me to provide evidence to you that humans are not warming the planet. However, my thesis isn’t that humans aren’t warming the planet.
Suppose I tell you “in one year an asteroid will hit Berlin and completely destroy it; you need to move out”. You can’t provide any evidence this is not going to happen, can you? For all you know, it could happen. Would you move away from Berlin just because you don’t have any evidence to the contrary? Most likely no. It is I who must provide the evidence that Berlin will be hit; you don’t need to provide evidence that it will not be hit.
Suppose then that I show you a faint dot in the sky with a telescope. “There’s the asteroid,” I tell you. Would that evidence be sufficient for you? Obviously no. A faint dot in a telescope could be a star, a comet, a galaxy, a cluster, etc. Even if I could prove to you it’s an asteroid, still this is far from sufficient evidence—there are thousands of asteroids around. Proving to you that an asteroid exists is very far from convincing evidence that it will hit Berlin next year.
Let’s go back to this climate change thing. Some time before 1990, James Hansen comes and says something along the lines of “humans are warming the planet and this is going to destroy us”. I can’t provide any evidence that this is not happening. For all I know, it could be happening. Should I start believing in crumpled-horned snorkacks just because I can’t prove they don’t exist? I think that it is James Hansen that must provide the evidence for his claim.
This is then my thesis: I find the evidence unconvincing. I’m looking through the warmists’ telescopes, and all I see is asteroids. I don’t see the slightest indication that these asteroids are on a collision course with Berlin.
I’m not claiming that the climate isn’t warming or isn’t cooling or is or is not being changed by humans. I’m claiming that the evidence provided about the mainstream claim is weak to the point of being practically nonexistent.
Good examples. However, I’m not sure which asteroid going to hit the earth (evidence) you don’t see.
For anthropocentric CO2, we could go through http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_origin.html
Temperature increase and related aspects (climate change) seems obvious to me. See e.g. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ or, more graphically https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/graphic-global-warming-from-1880-to-2018/
Do you have doubts on the greenhouse gases (mainly CO2) being the cause of the climate change?
Or you don’t believe that projections of future temperatures (climate models) are accurate or can be made at all?
Let me see… I think the mainstream claim about the changing climate has these premises:
1. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing considerably since 1958 (I agree with this).
2. The main reason for this increase is humans burning stuff (I have no opinion on this).
3. The average surface temperature of the Earth since 1900 has increased by roughly 1°C (I have no opinion on this).
4. Climate models indicate that the increase of the temperature is caused by the increase of carbon dioxide (I agree with this, i.e. I agree with the fact that climate models indicate something).
5. Climate models are accurate enough (I disagree with this).
6. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is a sufficiently known function of human emissions, therefore we can estimate future concentrations based on estimations of future emissions (I have no opinion on this premise, which seems a stricter version of (2)).
7. Climate models can provide sufficiently reliable estimates of future average surface temperature based on future estimates of carbon dioxide concentration (this premise is probably the same as (5), and I disagree with it).
In 1982 an excellent group of climate scientists conducted a secret study on anthropocentric CO2 and related global temperature increase. 38 years later, we look at the predictions they made, and they result to be totally accurate. At least regarding CO2 and global temperature, the models going back as far as 1982 worked. The actual models, using more data and better hardware, should be even more accurate. Here you can see the congresswoman of USA questioning one of that scientists today and the accuracy of their predictions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGVW9vJ773k
Regarding proving the absence of spikes, I would like to insist that if the data contains no spikes, and there are no reasons to presuppose spikes (like maybe a proxy indicating extraordinary volcanic activity), seems to me common-sense to just accept the data at hand. Just saying the data must be wrong indicates a non-scientific bias.
On the absence of spikes, I will reply at the comments of the “Carbon dioxide: uncharted territory” post, or to a new post (I’ll check about it).
Regarding the alleged 1982 accurate and secret study, please start a new post pointing to that study. Obviously I can’t reply if I don’t know which study we’re talking about.
The Exxon’s study – which I named secret only because the company prohibited its public dissemination – is mentioned in the video I linked above with the congresswoman questioning one of the authors of the study. You can also find more on that study at https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken
Additionally, I recently read another article on Science Magazine on the accuracy of climate models as old as 50 years at https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming
For what I understand, it seems clear that from the 340 W/m2 incoming solar radiation, if you add CO2 in the atmosphere, fewer infrared radiation goes back to space increasing global temperature, mostly in the oceans. Models predicting the temperature increase due to that radiation and CO2 (among others gases and particles) have been already in the last decades very accurate.
The IPCC takes into consideration many modern climate models for its predictions, and I don’t understand how that models can be denied (your points 5. and 7. above) all together although they were already accurate in the past.