Chief:
Sounds like doubletalk to me. We know there were periods in geological history where CO2 levels were substantially higher then what is projected for the end of the 21st century. At no time did we observe runaway global warming like the GCM models project. It isn’t about correlation versus causation. It is about the inability of real data to match model projections. The source of the carbon is irrelevant to the debate. The atmosphere cares little if the CO2 is generated from a lighting strike induced forest fire or an SUV.
James Gliek in his book “Chaos: The Birth of a New Science” spent some time on early GCM models. These models produced the white earth phenomenon as temperatures dived off the scale. All the models exhibited unstable behavior. Oddly enough one Dr. James Hansen was in the forefront of early GCM modeling and was a big proponent of the coming man-made ice age. He reversed himself in the 1980s as we went into a natural warming cycle. Now instead of projecting a descent into a white world the models suddenly came around to predict that temperatures would rise out of the livable range. GCM models are inherently unstable because of non-linear effects. Dress them up; improve the solution algorithms and increase the models’ complexity and you still are left with an unstable solution set. GCM models are worthless beyond 7-10 days or actually 7-10 time steps. There is no real data that supports the man-made global warming hypothesis only model results.
