This “new generation greenhouse campaigner” had been brought to Australia as the guest of CSIRO and the Commission.  The occasion was Greenhouse 88 at Dallas Brookes Hall in Melbourne (on 3 November) with a video link to venues in other states.

My Pauline Conversion dates from that night.  Unexpectedly, I found that (at least in my opinion) Schneider’s address, supposedly on the science, was advocacy with but a tenuous and selective scientific basis.  In particular, he told us that “the atmosphere will warm as much in the next 50 years as it did in the past 15,000” ie since before the Glacial/Interglacial transition!  That evening was my Road to Damascus.

Since then I have written and spoken extensively on climate-change, particularly combining an economic perspective with a consideration of the science

My views on the science sensu stricto were elaborated (Foster 1999) in a non-peer-reviewed paper based on the scientific literature to end 1998.  This paper supported my appearance before the inquiry into the Kyoto Protocol by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties in Melbourne on 13 September 2000; and my written submission of that time touched on a similarly-broad range and long time-span of climate-related science.

My supplementary submission 8 of 15 November extended its coverage to include analysis of relevant new material appearing in the scientific literature since mid-2000.  While the present paper follows on from that supplementary submission, it develops only those parts of the text relating to observed 20th century warming, and to the veracity of model-based predictions of future warming.

In Thomas Kuhn’s view of science, the dominant paradigm dominates to the virtual exclusion of contra views - until it is finally overthrown by the irresistible accumulation of new information.

The dominant paradigm of global climate change is that of greenhouse warming, as vigorously espoused by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  If Kuhn’s understanding is correct, the greenhouse paradigm cannot be replaced by an alternative view evolved within IPCC.  When it is to go, IPCC’s paradigm will be overthrown by competing views developed on the outside.

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8.  Foster, Robert J. 2000, “The Kyoto Protocol: don’t forget the science”, 100 pages and 77 figures.  Supplementary submission of 15 November 2000 to the Inquiry into the Kyoto Protocol by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties of the Australian Parliament (Hon Andrew Thomson MP, Chairman). 

The IPCC Report (Houghton et al Eds, 1996) follows what I term the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ hypothesis of global climate change.  This asserts that human-caused changes to the composition of the atmosphere were the source of all or most of the observed surface warming during the past century; and its predictions of warming ahead are founded on the same hypothesis.

How can a dominant paradigm which is ‘the consensus of 2,500 of the world’s top climate scientists’, has a virtual monopoly on research funding in relevant areas of scientific inquiry, and has the single-minded support of the media including the scientific press, ever be overthrown from outside?

All is not lost, however.  Karl Popper sees hypotheses as only ‘scientific’ when subject, at least in theory, to the Law of Empirical Disproof.  As I will demonstrate below, Popper’s Law has not been kind to IPCC during the past few years.  The Law of Empirical Disproof does not take sides; and neither is the advancement of science a matter of voting.

In an endeavour to provide an alternative hypothesis which will be better able to withstand the ravages of new information - with its constant threat of empirical disproof - I have codified herein a new hypothesis: the ‘Oceanic Impedance’ hypothesis of global climate change.

If indeed it were found that human-caused changes to the composition of the atmosphere were not the main driver for 20th century warming, but instead that warming was the outcome of (largely cyclical) natural influences, the environment would be the winner.

The Kyoto Protocol could be left unratified, and money and zeal now diverted to the greenhouse cause could be re-directed to better-founded and more-pressing environmental needs.

The stakes are high.
 

You read it first here

© 2001  Bob Foster  Posted   9, April, 2001
www.globalwarming-news.com
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