Monday, September 26, 2011

No Scientific Way to Study Climate

One of the tough things about studying something like climate is there is no way to run a controlled experiment to test the impact of, for instance, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It isn't possible.

When atmospheric carbon dioxide goes up, there may also be variations in solar radiation, so-called cosmic radiation, the oceanic phenomena known collectively as el nino and la nina, and other factors thought to have an impact on climate. These may act in accord or in contradiction with each other. Understanding the effect of any one factor is essentially impossible.