The pot and the kettle - climate change

I couldn't resist the title of Charles Krauthammer's latest column: The myth of 'settled science'. The touchstone for his rant is President Obama's assertion that "the debate is settled". He is far more judicious and scientific in his stalwart stance athwart the fence - refusing to know whether climate change is anthropogenic. His argument rests on an epistemological technicality - that nothing can be known for certain.

The IPCC agrees. Which is why in 2007 they quantified their level of certainty at 90-100% and in 2013 they revised that upwards to 95-100%. The level of consensus among scientists is considerably higher then in the public or political sphere. The number of climate science papers that challenge the consensus is 'vanishingly small', according to a recent study, whereas 97% of those that express opinion are in favor of the consensus.

Dr. K ignores the fact that the vast majority of scientists and every major scientific organization endorse the consensus view. Instead he focuses on one scientist in particular - a rather unscientific survey if you ask me. His subject is no less than his eminence Freeman Dyson, who has criticized some of the assumptions in climate simulations. But Dyson, who is 90, has not done serious climate work since the 70s. In a 2009 interview he said:

My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it's rather against the way those people behave the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.

Lost in the shuffle is that Dyson actually agrees with the consensus!

And what about the pause in global warming over the last 15 years?

Even the raw data is recalcitrant, let alone the assumptions and underlying models, how settled is the science?

There has indeed been a 15 year pause in the rise of the earth's surface temperature, but not in any other key indicators of global warming. The heat is going into the oceans. Sea levels and polar melting have not paused. In fact sea level rise, due to heat expansion of seawater, has accelerated over the same period.

But Dr. K's treatment of the science is just a sideshow for his main agenda which is to criticize President Obama's "whoring" climate propaganda. I kid you not:

But whoring is whoring, and the gods must be appeased. So if California burns, you send your high priest … to offer up … a burnt offering called a "climate resilience fund".

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Propaganda goes both ways of course in politics. But to suggest that we should wait for 100% certainty in anything before we plan for the future is surely folly.