Science is tentative. Every hypothesis, every theory, every assumption is open to challenge and, given new data, amendment or erasure. That's how the scientific method works. Or, at least, that's how the scientific method is supposed to work. Scientific inquiry is supposed to be immune to agendas and unscientific claims and assertions.
Unfortunately, that's not how it works when political agendas like runaway climate change are concerned. There's a lot of money and influence to be gained in panic-mongering, after all, and that's a big part of what's going on, in why the climate scolds keep on keeping on, trying to get us to surrender our modern lifestyles.
The problem they are having is that facts are stubborn things, and the claims of the scolds just keep getting proven to be utter horse squeeze. Case in point: Greenland. Yes, Greenland's ice sheet is slowly melting, as it has been since the end of the last major glaciation. But it turns out that most of that water is not running into the ocean to flood our coastlines. So where is that water going?
Mostly, it turns out, right back into the ice. Watts Up With That's Charles Rotter has the details:
The guardians of “settled science” have found themselves in another awkward bind. A new study in Nature Communications has discovered that Greenland’s ice sheet has been quietly defying the rules written for it by climate modelers. Instead of every drop of meltwater rushing downhill to flood the coastlines, as we’ve been warned for decades, large portions soak into the porous bare ice, freeze again at night, and never reach the sea.
This is science, folks. New data, amending or overturning old assumptions. In this case, it's more of an "amending," but it's a big amending.
This is not a minor correction. It strikes at the heart of the projections used to frighten schoolchildren, reshape economies, and justify sweeping technocratic policies. For years, Greenland has been painted as the great tipping point. But according to the paper:
“There is substantial observational evidence that these models overestimate runoff from bare ice surfaces. In the ablation zone of Greenland’s melt-intensive southwest sector, proglacial and supraglacial river discharge measurements reveal up to 67% less annual meltwater release to surrounding oceans than climate model calculations.”
That is not a rounding error. That is climate models telling us to expect a biblical flood while the field instruments record a leaky garden hose.
The problem lies in the way bare ice was conceptualized. The authors explain:
“Climate models traditionally treat bare ice as an impervious, high-density substrate with no capacity to retain water. Accordingly, runoff produced on bare ice is instantly credited in its entirety to sea level, despite growing field reports of non-trivial meltwater retention on or within bare ice.”
This isn't a small correction. It's a big correction. Previous calculations on the Greenland ice sheet's melting and its effect on sea levels were done with the assumption that most, if not all, of the meltwater ran into the ocean, causing not only a rise in overall levels but also changes in temperature and salinity that could have an effect on ocean currents, most notably the North Atlantic Current, which brings a flow of warm tropical water into the northern hemisphere. This is in large part what keeps the British Isles rather warmer and wetter than their latitude would seem to indicate.
Turns out it's not in any danger; at least, not from Greenland.
Read More: Oceans Rising? Yet Another New Study Says No
Now, Climate Scolds Propose... Blocking the Sun. Really?
Nature is full of self-correction mechanisms, and this may well be one of them. More to the point, though, is the fact that once again, the people who study these things are having to reformulate their assumptions based on new data, data knocking down a bad assumption. Why? Because the fact is, we just don't understand all of these interacting systems as well as we'd like to, and not nearly as well as the climate scolds claim we do. Not knowing about something like the extent to which porous ice recaptures and refreezes meltwater would seem like a pretty major thing to try to understand, but it seems to have been badly underestimated, at least until now.
Why is that a big deal? Politicians and activists are pushing public policy based on the original assumptions, which were based on flawed data.
That's not what science is supposed to be used for, but too often, it is - used to push an agenda.
Mr. Rotter continues:
The Greenland paper provides another textbook example. The authors admit their own models consistently overpredicted runoff:
“By the end of the 6–13 July 2016 field experiment, climate model runoff ranges from 7% lower (MERRA−2) to 58% higher (RACMO2.3p3) than observations, similar to +21–58% we previously reported for 2015.”
Think about that. A “state-of-the-art” regional climate model was 58% off. No engineer would accept a bridge design model that missed by 58%. No accountant would tolerate a budget model that overshot by 58%. But in climate science, this level of error is routinely called “robust.”
A model, then, was off by as much as nearly 60 percent. That's not even remotely close.
That's OK. The data will keep coming in. The climate scolds will, for the most part (remember the old caution about blind hogs and acorns), continue to be proven wrong. The people doing actual science will keep uncovering new data. Our understanding of the massive, chaotic, vast climate systems of our planet will continue to grow, and if I can make a prediction, that understanding will continue to support the contention that there is no need for panic - and certainly no need to surrender our modern, high-technology, energy-hungry lifestyles.
