Doug Sheridan wows…

“As statisticians, their conclusion—“With the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.”

Holman Jenkins writes in the WSJ, in a recent paper published by the Norwegian govt’s statistical agency, two of its retired experts ask a simple question—are climate simulations a sufficient basis for attributing observed warming to human CO2? After all, Earth’s climate has been subject to substantial warming and cooling trends for millennia that remain unexplained and can’t be attributed to fossil fuels.

As statisticians, their conclusion—“With the current level of knowledge, it seems impossible to determine how much of the temperature increase is due to emissions of CO2.”

Wow.

To be clear, many who are concerned about climate change have no trouble seeing the problem as a matter of risks rather than certainties. This includes co-author John Dagsvik, who favors emissions curbs for precautionary reasons.

What really upsets critics is the paper’s touching on the measurement problem. Since we’re using abstruse calcs of an annual avg global temp to validate climate models, it matters if these calculations—based on disparate instruments and unstable sampling frequencies and a variety of proxies for times and places when no measurements were taken—are accurate and meaningful.

Before 2015, NOAA reported that 2005 and 2010 were equally warm to the second decimal. By 2015, the record was changed to claim 2010 was warmer than 2005. Such adjustments are common and the Norwegians point out the obvious, “It is impossible to evaluate the validity of such administrative changes for an outside user of these records.” Sixteen of such revisions were made to the long-past temp record in just the previous three years.

If a future climate scandal is lurking, it’s here. A spirit of disingenuousness already pervades NOAA’s use of these numbers to make “hottest year” and “hottest month” proclamations, ignoring its own stated margin of error, which is often a large multiple of the claimed temperature difference from one period to the next.

Something beyond hysteria, though, explains the continued reliance on the no-longer-plausible idea that ritually attacking every expression of skepticism moves the ball on climate policy. By now, it’s some people’s job to enact these rituals of denunciation simply because it helps prop up the green corporate welfare that has become the primary substitute for climate action.

A new study from former NASA scientist James Hansen also throws the climate crowd into a tizzy of cognitive dissonance. Warming will be worse because of our success in reducing particulate exhaust from vehicles and power sources has reduced the atmospheric aerosols that slow warming.

Wow, again.

Hansen champions nuclear power and research into using aerosols artificially to cool the planet, anathema since it doesn’t involve a giant convulsion of green socialism. You can bet most of his argument will be ignored except the part about faster warming, since it can be used to bludgeon any deniers who might be handy.