Poor Gaea, the little Earth goddess just can't win

**Posted by Phineas

First the air is too dirty for us to breathe, so we clean it up. Then along come ~~Gaea cultists~~ climate-change researchers to tell us that, because we cleaned the air that —OMG!!!— the Earth will overheat!

New research initiated jointly by NUI Galway and the University of Helsinki reveals the true rate of greenhouse gas induced global warming has been masked by atmospheric aerosols (otherwise known as Particulate Matter), through their formation of reflective haze and cloud layers leading to an aerosol cooling effect.

The new investigations show that the present-day aerosol cooling effect will be strongly reduced by 2030 as more stringent air pollution abatements are implemented both worldwide and at the European scale and as advanced environmental technologies are utilised.

These actions are projected to increase the global temperature by 1°C and temperatures over Europe by up to 2-4°C depending on the severity of the action. This is one of the main research outcomes of the recently concluded EUCAARI (European Integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interaction) project funded by the European Commission.

The EUCAARI project, originally initiated by Professor Colin O’Dowd at NUI Galway’s Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies, who resided on the project’s management team, and led by Professor Markku Kulmala of the University of Helsinki, has provided new understanding of the impacts of aerosols and trace gases on clouds and climate.

According to Professor O’Dowd:“The quantification of the effect of aerosols on the radiative balance (cooling or heating) of the planet has been one of the most urgent tasks to underpin more informed projections of future climate change. Now that we have this data we need to reinforce European political decision-making to develop new strategies and implementation plans for global air quality monitoring and to take Europe a leading role in developing and applying environmental technologies. Furthermore, it is urgent that higher-resolution EU-scale projections are conducted using a new generation of regional models nested within the global models.”

I highlighted that last sentence because I figured it needed a translation from the bureaucratese (scientist dialect):

“We need more grant money.”

Clear now?

Note also the third paragraph, which begins “These actions are projected…” It’s a cute trick. “Projected” is a code word for using computer models using whatever data the researchers fed into it — data that’s possibly been “cleaned up” or otherwise manipulated, as we saw in the Climategate revelations and the exposure of Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph as useless garbage that would produce the (desired) scary result no matter what numbers were input. The fact is that we have only a very few decades of empirical observations to work with, and to try to “project” that out into the future when we’re dealing with extraordinarily complex and poorly understood climate systems is laughable.

Remember, they’re “projecting,” not “predicting.” To predict something would be to make it a test of the validity of the computer model, and with the lousy predictive record global-warming alarmists have so far, I doubt they’d want to do that. “Projection” is much better, because it allows the model-maker to escape accountability and hem-and-haw and say “the model must need more refinement” and then apply for another grant for money to pour down the same drain.

Do I sound cynical? Maybe it’s because there’s no evidence that’s yet been uncovered that shows that anything happening now is outside the range of what’s happened in the last several hundred million years, which we can see from the geological record.

With apologies to Drs. O’Dowd and Kulmala, until shown otherwise with empirical proof, rather than projections from models, I think it’s safe to keep cleaning the air.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

Mike Giles says:

July 1, 2011 at 7:30 pm

The problem with these computer models which purport to project into the future, is that they aren’t correct when they project back into the past where we know what the conditions are. When your models don’t match historical data, then you’re dealing with garbage.

Phineas says:

July 1, 2011 at 10:58 pm

Mike,

That’s an excellent point, one I should have remembered to put into the post.

Drew the Infidel says:

July 2, 2011 at 6:06 am

How about a little perspective? Imagine you are sitting in the stands at a football stadium and all the lines on the field represent the component gases in the universe. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would not equal even one of those lines.

George Robinson says:

July 3, 2011 at 11:18 am

Ever watched what happens when the class wimp gets a turn at hall monitor? Liberals have no capacity for actual leadership, they create chrisis’ to render unto themselves degrees of authority they could not otherwise achieve. Nothing is ever fixed, made better, because they insist upon some utopian outcome. Lets raise the results for ninety percent of some class, group or category, not good enough, lower everybody, everything to the ten percent level. Cleaner air is not an option, only pristine.