What would falsify my thesis

Hello Ivan,

Isaac Newton concluded that if there are two masses, m₁ and m₂, at a distance R from each other, then they are mutually attracted with a force F=G×m₁×m₂/R². If you apply this formula together with F=m×a, it turns out that if you have a large mass such as the Sun and a small one like Earth, the small one will be in an elliptical orbit around the large one.

But Mercury’s orbit is not elliptical. It’s almost elliptical. The ellipsis it describes is slowly revolving around the Sun. This was a mystery for many years. In 1915, Albert Einstein said “Newton’s formula isn’t quite right. Here’s the correct formula. If you use that one, you get the correct orbit.” That was a very exciting development.

Depending on how you interpret Newton’s theory and whatever theory of light you have, when light from a distant star passes near the Sun, it might bend a little or it might continue in a straight line. According to Einstein’s new theory, when light from a distant star passes near the Sun, it bends, period. It bends twice as much as what Newton’s theory allows. So, in 29 May 1919, astronomers assembled through the path of a solar eclipse, equipped with instruments that would enable them to measure the exact location of a star that was visually near the Sun. They found out that the star’s deflection was as much as Einstein’s theory predicted.

So Einstein’s theory was confirmed. It wasn’t proven true, of course. That is not possible. You can’t prove that a theory is true. But there must be a way to falsify it. There must be a test that, if it fails, it proves that the theory is wrong. If the 1919 test had failed, Einstein’s theory would have been proven wrong. So Einstein’s theory was falsifiable.

Can you imagine a case where the 1919 test failed, but people still accepted the theory? What if they said “it’s so elegant, it explains so many things, so let’s just ignore that”? Would you accept this statement? The right answer should be no. The correct response to a failure of the test would be “that theory was so elegant and it explained so many things, what a pity it is that it was proven wrong!”

Now, take the statement “humans are causing global warming”. If this statement is scientific, then it must be falsifiable. However, since it was first proposed in the 1970s, and while it has been presented as a fact since the 1980s, I haven’t seen any proposal for any test that could falsify it.

In fact, in 12 October 2009, leading climate scientist Kevin Trenberth wrote this in an email to Michael Mann and several other climate scientists:

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

So there you have it. Reality does not coincide with your predictions. Let’s just ignore that!

As I’ve explained before, I shouldn’t need to provide a falsifiability test for what I believe, because it wasn’t I who put forward any novel idea. The novel idea is that humans are causing global warming, and it is the people who support this novel idea who need to propose a test that could potentially falsify their idea.

That said, I could be wrong. It’s possible that I’ve been given substantial evidence that humans are causing global warming and that I haven’t taken it in. So it’s only fair that I propose some events that, if they happened, I’d change my mind. Or at least I’d be willing to reconsider.

Before presenting these potential events, I’ll restate my thesis: there is no evidence of anthropogenic global warming. That is my thesis. Not that anthropogenic global warming isn’t happening, but that there is zero evidence for such a thing. I have explained this at length.

Here are, then, some hypothetical events that, if they happened, I’d be willing to look into the issue with a fresh look:

One. In 2010 we took the output of climate models and compared it to real measurements. We found that the predictions were poor. Unsurprisingly, we were attacked by the climate community, on the grounds that our methodology was wrong.

They told us we shouldn’t make comparisons on geographical points, but they ignored the fact that we also compared the United States average.

They also repeated their conviction that if a climate model predicts an increase in temperature from 12 to 12.5 °C, and in reality the temperature increases from 15 to 15.5 °C, then the model is fine; we shouldn’t be comparing the 15 against the 12, but the difference of 0.5 °C against the difference of 0.5 °C. They ignored the fact that we extensively explained why not subtracting the mean was the correct thing to do. I also don’t remember the details, but I think that among the many ways in which we compared, there is one that isn’t affected by whether we subtracted the mean or not, and that one doesn’t provide any better results.

Here is, therefore, one hypothetical event that would make me reconsider: if someone could explain to us what we’ve done wrong.

I realize I’m running in circles. Because the question then becomes: what hypothetical explanation would convince me that we’ve done something wrong? However, you have to admit that the critique “the methodology part simply sucks and there’s nothing to see here; the rest of the paper sucks because the methodology is wrong” shouldn’t be very convincing for anyone.

It’s a hard exercise, I admit.

Two. I’ll stick to the comparison of differences from the mean, because it is the elephant in the room.

“The earth has warmed by 0.7 °C!” “The earth will warm by 4 °C by the end of the century!” You hear these claims all the time. Have you ever seen any claim that the earth will warm from 15 °C to 19 °C? No! Never! Come to think of it, what is the average temperature of the earth that we’re scared is increasing? Is it 15 °C? Is it 14.5 °C? Try to search the web for that. Hint: You won’t find anything. Not a word. And no-one even asks about it. That’s why I say it’s the elephant in the room.

In said paper, we explored this a good deal. First of all, we wondered: what is the justification for subtracting the mean? We searched and searched and searched. We were able to find three explanations. One of them was that not subtracting the mean immediately proved the models wrong. Certainly not very convincing. The two other explanations did not make any sense at all.

And then we made a strong case why the mean shouldn’t be subtracted. Climate models don’t predict differences; they predict absolute values. A climate model doesn’t predict a 0.5 °C increase; it predicts that the temperature today is 12 °C and that it will be 12.5 °C in 30 years. Now, in reality the temperature might increase from 15 °C from 15.5 °C. The model errs by 3 °C in the value, but it is accurate in the 0.5 °C of difference? How can that be? We took a look into the theoretical foundation of how the models work and concluded that subtracting the mean doesn’t make any sense at all. In our own words:

The question then arises on what grounds a model that errs … by 4.3% in radiative energy could detect a future decadal trend of 0.7%, that is, six times lower.

So, the second hypothetical event would be if climate modelers talked about that elephant. While it wouldn’t be conclusive (because climate models suck even when you subtract the mean), them explaining what we got wrong about all this would help tremendously in me getting some good faith towards reconsidering.

Three. The fact that a scientific claim doesn’t seem to stand doesn’t surprise me much. This has happened lots of times in the past. But there is one peculiarity about climate change that baffles me. It is that everything related doesn’t make any sense at all.

Let me accept, for a moment, that I’ve been wrong and the climate modelers are 100% right. Humans are warming the planet. With that assumption in mind, let’s examine these claims:

• “We can make a difference with low-energy lamps. In fact, this is so important that we need to ban incandescents.” That claim is completely false.
• “We can make a difference with wind turbines. In fact, this is so important that we need to mandate spending 5 times more on wind energy than we would on carbon.” That claim is false on so many levels that I don’t know where to begin. Unfortunately I have only written a report in Greek about that (but there’s much information around).
• “We can make a difference with solar panels. In fact, this is so important that we need to mandate spending 10 times more on solar energy than we would on carbon.” Likewise.
• “Electric vehicles consume less energy and produce fewer emissions. In fact, this is so important that we need to ban vehicles with combustion engines.” That claim is completely false.
• “We can predict what the climate will be in specific parts of the globe.” This is such a big issue that it does not fit in the bullet, so I’ll need to change paragraph.

Climate models work by breaking up the atmosphere in little pieces and calculate how each piece will behave based on what its neighbouring pieces are doing. These little pieces are called grid points. A grid point on the surface of the earth is something like 200×200 km. Modelers claim that models don’t produce good results at single grid points, but they produce good results in the average of larger areas, such as continents. (In fact, they’ve attacked us for making comparisons against real measurements at single grid points, when they’ve never explained why a model would be right in a continent while being wrong in a grid point, and when we’ve explained theoretically—in our 2010 paper—that this does not make any sense at all, to which we have received the response “there’s nothing to see here”. But I’m still writing under the assumption that what climate modelers say is 100% correct, so I’m ignoring that for now and I take what they say at face value.)

Because 200×200 km is a quite large area, there’s a large amount of climate change researchers and research projects (and public spending) that goes into investigating how climate change will affect specific smaller areas, like how climate change will affect the Mesohora reservoir in Greece. They do this with a technique called “downscaling”. They assume the climate model’s output at the single grid point is correct, and they run a small denser model inside that grid point (i.e. the nested model has smaller grid size) to determine details. (Search Google Scholar for “downscaling” to get a feeling of the amount of effort that goes into that.)

I think you can see where I’m going with that: If, as climate modelers say, climate models get single grid points wrong, how is it possible to downscale these wrong results and get correct results at an even finer scale?

But although climate modelers have attacked us for making comparisons at single grid points (rightly so, since I’m still writing under my assumption that they’re 100% right), they’ve never said: “Hey! Downscaling? You can’t do this with climate models!” But no-one in the climate change community seems to be challenging downscaling.

So I’m asking for a little consistency. How is it possible that we are worried about sea level rise while land prices in downtown London are skyrocketting? The only consistent people I’ve seen are Greta Thunberg and you (because you’re worried about climate change, and you are trying to find out whether moving somewhere else could help your descendants survive).

So here’s the third hypothetical event. If a climate modeler (even better, a group of climate modelers) came and said “Guys, let’s be real. First of all, stop doing downscaling, it doesn’t work. Second, forget about ‘A+’ devices at home. Either we go nuclear, or we go to live as we did in 1850. These are our only two options—save global catastrophe, of course.” If a climate modeler said that, it would add a lot of credibility in my eyes. It would show that the guy is serious and consistent (especially if he was also preparing to move to Svalbard). I’d then contact him and try to find out what he has to say about the difference-from-the-mean issue and the single-grid-point issue and the other questions I’ve touched upon here.

For the record, I’m not expressing any opinion on nuclear energy. Like many people, I’m afraid of it, but I haven’t looked into it carefully in order to have a good informed opinion. Since I don’t believe in the mainstream climate change opinion, if I did look carefully into it, I might conclude we should or shouldn’t go nuclear. What I’m saying is that if you do believe in the mainstream climate change opinion, then going nuclear is the only consistent action (other than going to 1850).

I think I could add one or two more hypothetical events, but these are enough for now.