I have an interest in climate science because most of my friends believe that man-made global warming is causing irreversible damage to the planet (and I am tired of arguing with them), and because I saw a presentation of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” speech back in the day. Gore’s presentation used the “hockey stick” global temperature graph of Mark Mann and claimed that man-made emissions of fossil fuels is causing inevitable and catastrophic global warming. It scared the crap out of me. I have always believed that fear-based narratives have no part in legitimate science, so I look for evidence to the contrary — evidence of a more positive climate future.
A new paper, “A Critical Reassessment of the Anthropogenic CO₂-Global Warming Hypothesis: Empirical Evidence Contradicts IPCC Models and Solar Forcing Assumptions,” details the pitfalls that characterize climate science. This is the first academic paper I have seen that openly acknowledges AI (Grok3) as one of the authors.
After reading this well-sourced and well-written study, I understand that AI can be used to help us drill down into the morass of politicized science to find the truth. I have personally found Grok3 to be pretty accurate on STEM subjects.
Climate science in particular has been manipulated to promote crazy ideas like runaway global warming, which states that the human use of fossil fuels is causing an irreversible planetary warming trend that threatens all life on the planet. While the end result of getting our economy off fossil fuels is necessary – we are polluting this planet’s air, soil, and water – using questionable science to promote scientific narratives only tarnishes the argument.
Here’s a short review of this paper. I did not use AI to summarize it because all AI-generated text must be fact checked. And in fact, that was the primary purpose of the human authors of this study. AI is great at collecting and summarizing large amounts of information but its conclusions are based on its human programming and the data it has been fed.
Summary
Introduction. This paper is a critique of the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6).
1. The paper begins by critiquing the data sets and assumptions used by the IPCC and goes on to list its own data sources, which it claims are as free of bias as possible.
2. The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) states that the cumulative human emissions of 2,000 global tons of carbon (GtC) since 1750 is the cause of global warming. However, “the carbon reservoir in the oceans total 38,000 GtC, stored as dissolved CO₂, bicarbonates, and carbonates – a volume 19 times greater.” This just says that the oceans are huge carbon sinks that can easily absorb human CO2 emissions.
3. High-emission CO2 scenarios are common in climate research, especially those studies that claim severe impacts from CO2 in the future. “Approximately 20–30% of climate studies from 2004–2024 likely used these severe-impact scenarios.” In other words. some climate models are designed with a bias to promote the “global warming is dangerous” narrative.
4. The IPCC assumes that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 100 years, and that 25% of carbon emissions are still present 500 years after emission. This supports the conclusion that long-term global warming (and runaway warming) is inevitable, as more and more CO2 enters the atmosphere over time. Other studies, however, show that the persistence of CO2 in the atmosphere ranges from only 3 years to 7.5 years, with the average being 3.5 years. This is consistent with the natural carbon absorption provided by terrestrial and ocean sinks that neutralize CO2.
5. Temperature changes precede CO₂ concentration increases by 6–12 months. The IPCC assumes CO₂ leads temperature (indicating that CO2 is the cause of global warming), yet unadjusted data and causality analyses indicate the reverse. This casts doubt on man-made global warming and suggests that “CO₂ responds to temperature via natural processes.”
6. Climate modeling studies exaggerate the response to CO₂. The models’ estimates of the earth’s temperature increase range from 2.0°C to 4.5°C, with a best estimate around 3°C. This far exceeds the observed global warming of approximately 0.8-1.1°C since 1750, despite a CO₂ increase from 280 ppm to 420 ppm (a 50% rise).
The study states that the accuracy of climate models is suspect, for a variety of reasons. “Ultimately, even when these [climate] models occasionally align with observed outcomes, their predictions stem from flawed assumptions rather than accurate physics…. they remain unvalidated against real-world data and have been repeatedly falsified across multiple metrics.”
7. When the 11-year solar cycle is at its maximum – when the amount of solar radiation is at its height – corresponds with warming trends on earth (1950s, 1980s). Solar minima, when the amount of solar radiation is at its weakest (1970s) correspond with cooling trends. Climate change models minimize the influence of solar radiation and exaggerate the influence of CO₂.
Comment: When you put a pot of soup on the stove it gets warmer. When you turn off the heat it gets colder. It aint rocket science.
8. The NOAA’s climate data used in climate models is “homogenized.” This is a fancy word for “fudged.” This happens because “weather stations are distributed densely in warmer urban areas and sparsely placed in remote regions, which necessitates interpolation to create regular grids for global temperature analyses.”
9. Warming temperatures liberate CO₂, not vice versa.
10. “A key finding of this study is the minimal contribution of man-made CO₂ emissions to the global carbon cycle.”
Conclusion
Lack of accuracy in accounting for Total Solar Irradiance (the amount of solar radiation that hits the earth), the irregular distribution of weather stations, with dense coverage in warmer urban areas and sparse representation in remote regions, codebase sharing of inaccurate weather station data biased toward higher temperatures, inaccurate IPCC modeling that is biased toward warming, and inaccurate assumptions concerning the effect of CO2 on temperatures, all result in a fear-based narrative of man-made global warming, and alarmist predictions that scare people to death.
As academic scientific papers go, this one is fairly easy to read. You can make your own AI summary of this paper by feeding it into your favorite large language model.
