Climate Science is Not Settled

Dr. Steven E. Koonin wrote this column in the Wall Street Journal, and explains how the science is not settled, and we need to remain focused on the scientific methods, not exploiting data to push any agenda.

Climate Science Is Not Settled

According to Koonin the degree to which climate data is collected and analyzed leaves us lacking in our ability to make climate projections.  This means that we need to continue to do more research, and we also need to improve our modeling with more granularity in the data.

I believe that many politicians and others are attempting to stifle research and debate by scientists and the population, convincing you that we need to act as they prescribe.  This amounts to a power grab, with the goal being income redistribution.   They stifle debate by cherry picking data, omitting that which does not support the theory, and including that which does.  Here is one example cited by Koonin.

"Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century."

Remember President Obama's speech in which he said about his election, that this would be the moment when the rise of the oceans slowed?  Koonin also cites the fact that Arctic ice may be lacking, but Antarctic ice is as extremely high levels.  Al Gore and other climate alarmists won't concede that fact.

Koonin's main point is that we must continue the research simply because the climate does change continuously, and we should better understand the how and why of it.  I agree.  But if we abandon scientific methods we may regret what our plans  may result in.

From the article is this statement which quite simply states what we're up against if when we debate this issue:

"While the past two decades have seen progress in climate science, the field is not yet mature enough to usefully answer the difficult and important questions being asked of it. This decidedly unsettled state highlights what should be obvious: Understanding climate, at the level of detail relevant to human influences, is a very, very difficult problem."