CLIMATE CHANGE -- Questioning The Mantra

                          
                   More On Ignoring The "Scientific Method"
                                            By Michael J. Brown
Michael Brown is a retired Army Officr who holds an MBA from The College of William and Mary. He published the piece below in The Virginia Gazette as a follow-up to Steve Kauffman's op-ed published in the same paper and posted on this blog on February 7. As with Mr. Kauffman's published piece, I had nothing to do with their decision to write and publish, but found both to be so objective and accurate as to be compelling to post on this blog. I am honored to know both individuals as thinking people who seek truth and avoid the herd-think that dominates the "climate change" issue today. 
Accurate scientific results and conclusions are not arrived at by "consensus" of a group of scientists. Rather, correct scientific results are derived from use of "The Scientific Method" that assures opinion, bias and dishonesty are excluded from the final results and decisions. Today's climate change doctrine (mantra) is antithetical to this principle with politics being a major component of the claimed condition. Computer modeling, the substitute for "the method" and testing, does not exclude these unscientific inputs. In fact, it can be argued quite legitimately that they dominate the claims today.

Michael Brown's letter:

Steven Kauffman’s thoughtful essay, “Questioning Climate Change,” in the Wednesday Virginia Gazette discusses climate scientists applying climate research data to computer modeling.  It is significant that advocates of man-caused climate change are unable to use the proven “scientific method” traditionally required of serious scientists for their conclusions and consensus.


Computer modeling is a useful tool for all kinds of hypothesizing.  Fundamentally, the validity of a computer model (however well its algorithms are constructed) declines with increasing imprecision when the computer model’s variable sets (the dependent and independent components of the computer model) are limited, incomplete, and/or not fully understood in their causes and effects to Earth’s complex climate system.


The more incomplete a climate model’s real world components, the more skewed the model’s output in terms of reliability.  The more limited and general the components contained in the model, the less scientifically useful the model’s results.  Thus, it is the height of hubris to declare climate modeling results with respect to man-caused climate change to be a scientific certainty.


Earth’s climate is eternally in a state of change – change which is certainly not fully understood even today.  Climate scientists are forced to use only the slimmest lists of potentially significant climate variables for their models because that is all the data they have.  Such thin gruel is insufficient basis for the economically damaging prescriptions currently being advocated by some in today’s political arena.


A changing Earth’s climate has always been with us and always will.  The degree of human effect on our climate is considerably less certain.


Michael J. Brown

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