A new study from researchers at Rice University has determined that the best models and algorithms used today to predict possible future global temperature are potentially faulty. This conclusion, published online in Nature Geoscience today, is based on a well-documented warming period of Earth’s history about 55 million years ago. When they plugged in the variables from that time period, the end result was off by half of what was observed.
This statement runs in contrast to recent reports that have suggested man-made carbon contributions to our climate have already produced irreversable climate change, and that man-made global warming is now a foregone conclusion.
Using the same computer models and algorithms which predict our future today, after plugging in known data taken from real-world core samples obtained from all over the world related to the 55 million year-ago period, accounted for only about one-half of the warming seen during that period.
This discrepancy indicates very clearly that the correlation programmed today into our computer models is fundamentally flawed, and that the relationship between carbon and temperature is not as close or solid as is currently believed.
The conclusion therefore, according to Dickens, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of the heating during the 55 million year-ago period.
See Rice University’s press release
The fact that our current models were unable to account for about 50% of the 7C increase seen over 10,000 years during that time period indicates that today’s computer models may not be accounting for all of the variables necessary to determine any future temperature changes, whether they go up or down.
It could be that additional variables would indicate a far greater warming trend is coming our way, or that a far greater cooling trend is coming, or even that nothing will happen.
The bottom line is the sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Rice’s press release: “No one knows exactly how much Earth’s climate will warm due to carbon emissions…”