Climate Science Is Imprecise, cont.
More papers calling for a “rethink” about climate,
ignored by the mainstream media
(Continued from yesterday.)
Climate science is not a primary focus of Creation-Evolution Headlines, but sometimes it helps to show how consensus science is manufactured. If “settled science” behind vaccine and mask mandates have been dubious, and if expert astronomers spend millions of dollars on “dark matter” that may not even exist, and if climate scientists keep revising their models of primary data, then maybe perceptive citizens should not be too quick to believe that Darwinian evolution is a fact.
The following news stories are all from pro-warmist secular sources. Climate, as shown below, is a complex issue with many factors that are poorly constrained. How much more complex is the history of life according to evolutionists covering millions of years? We end with a couple of silly examples that look like some researchers are trying to come up with new ways to spend their funding allocations.
Catalytic role of formaldehyde in particulate matter formation (PNAS, Dovrou et al., 8 Feb 2022). Particle formation is a key data point in climate prediction, because particles are the seeds for clouds that can reflect sunlight away from the Earth. Whoops; climate models forgot to factor in particles made by formaldehyde. It’s of “great importance” —
Particulate matter, often formed via cloud processing, strongly influences the Earth’s climate and air quality. Particle composition depends on anthropogenic and biogenic emissions. Thus, in order to understand climate change, knowledge of the difference between preindustrial and current conditions is critical. Under preindustrial conditions, multifunctional organic hydroperoxides, which are strong oxidants and have the ability to contribute to particulate matter formation, are in higher concentrations in the atmosphere. In this work, we focus on the previously unknown importance of hydroxymethyl hydroperoxide, which can be formed by gas-phase reactions and in-cloud reaction of hydrogen peroxide with the simplest aldehyde, formaldehyde, revealing the catalytic role of formaldehyde, and demonstrate that this chemistry is of great importance for particle formation.
Trends in surface equivalent potential temperature: A more comprehensive metric for global warming and weather extremes (PNAS, Song et al., 8 Feb 2022). Another rethink is needed. These scientists think they have a better measure of climate warming than surface air temperature.
Don’t just blame climate change for weather disasters (Phys.org, 11 Feb 2022). Marlowe Hood interviews an expert in “attribution science,” the philosophical skill of determining whether an effect is logically attributable to a claimed cause. “Friederike Otto is adamant that the rising toll of heatwaves and hurricanes cannot be explained by global warming alone.”
Ozone Hole Rethink
Iodine in Desert Dust Destroys Ozone (Colorado University, Boulder, 22 Dec 2021). Remember the “ozone hole” crisis that led to worldwide bans on chlorofluorocarbons? That reduction has reduced the hole, but there’s another villain: natural iodine. It blows off desert dust and rises higher than thought, where it destroys ozone, the O3 layer high in the atmosphere that protects us from ultraviolet radiation.
“Iodine, the same chemical added as a nutrient to table salt, is eating up ozone in dusty air high in the atmosphere,” said Rainer Volkamer, a CIRES Fellow and professor of chemistry at CU Boulder. Volkamer led the team that made precision atmospheric measurements by aircraft over the eastern Pacific Ocean several years ago. The new finding, he said, has implications for not only air quality, but climate, too—iodine chemistry can make greenhouse gases stick around longer and should give us pause to re-think geoengineering schemes involving dust.
> Read more about this in the paper by Koenig et al., “Ozone depletion due to dust release of iodine in the free troposphere,” Science Advances, 22 Dec 2021.
The influence of iodine on the Antarctic stratospheric ozone hole (Cuevas et al., PNAS 15 Feb 2022). This paper, published two months after the previous one, says that the effect of iodine on the ozone layer is worse than expected.
The role of chlorine and bromine in Antarctic stratospheric ozone depletion is well known. However, the contribution of iodine to the ozone hole chemistry has not been assessed, mainly due to the negligible amounts of iodine previously reported to enter the stratosphere. New measurements demonstrate that the injection of iodine to the lower stratosphere is higher than previously assumed. Based on these observations, our modeling work shows that iodine chemistry can enhance spring ozone loss at the lower part of the Antarctic ozone hole, and even dominate the halogen-mediated ozone loss during summer. Iodine can also alter, by several days, the timing of the seasonal formation and closure of the ozone hole.
Climate Silliness
Studying penguin poo to understand the effects of climate change (University of Bath, 9 Feb 2022). This is just silly. Don’t scientists have better things to do?
Study shows climate change will lead to increase in kidney stones (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, 10 Jan 2022). Oh come on now.
Since “climate change” is so much in the news and dominates so much public policy on the assumption humans are causing it, we think our readers need to know about these papers and articles that are passed over by the mainstream media. The media wants to put out a uniform consensus message that humans are causing global warming. Big Tech even censors those who question the consensus.
Here again, though, we cite original source material by pro-warmist organizations and researchers to show how much guesswork and imprecision exists in the data. We keep finding more unknowns that were not considered before, bad assumptions and errors in measurement, and factors being rethought. They keep coming up every month. How many remaining unknowns are there? How much do scientists really know about climate change? You be the judge.
“The Earth is the Lord’s” (Psalm 24:1). We are merely stewards.
Illustration courtesy Santa Clarita Magazine; used by permission.