Saturday, March 18, 2017

Jeff Jacoby: Climate Models Fail So Often Because Climate Science Is So Incomplete — The Patriot Post

Jeff Jacoby: Climate Models Fail So Often Because Climate Science Is So Incomplete — The Patriot Post
"“Do you believe,” CNBC’s Joe Kernen asked Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency’s new director, in an interview last Thursday, “that it’s been proven that CO2 is the primary control knob for climate?”
Replied Pruitt: “No. I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no — I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
It was an accurate and judicious answer, so naturally it sent climate alarmists into paroxysms of condemnation. 
The Washington Post slammed Pruitt as a “denier” driven by “unreason.” 
Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii called Pruitt’s views “extreme” and “irresponsible” — proof of his unfitness to head the EPA. 
Image result for Global Warming Political Cartoons
...Yet for all the hyperventilating, Pruitt’s answer to the question he was asked — whether carbon dioxide is the climate’s “primary control knob” — was entirely sound. 
“We don’t know that yet,” he said. 
We don’t. 
CO2 is certainly a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, but hardly the primary one: Water vapor accounts for about 95 percent of greenhouse gases. 
By contrast, carbon dioxide is only a trace component in the atmosphere: about 400 ppm (parts per million), or 0.04 percent. 
Moreover, its warming impact decreases sharply after the first 20 or 30 ppm. 
Adding more CO2 molecules to the atmosphere is like painting over a red wall with white paint — the first coat does most of the work of concealing the red. 
A second coat of paint has much less of an effect, while adding a third or fourth coat has almost no impact at all..."

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