Collapse of the Climate Science Paradigm?

This is a comprehensive introduction to some of the problems in the current man-made global warming theory:

What is the current paradigm?

• Human activities, primarily carbon dioxide emissions, have been the primary cause of the observed global warming over the past 50 to 150 years.
• The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration had stabilized between 270 and 280 ppmv early in the Holocene and had remained in that range prior to the mid-19th century when fossil fuels became the primary energy source of the Industrial Revolution.
• Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are causing the atmospheric concentration to rise at a dangerously rapid pace to levels not seen in 100’s of thousands to millions of years.
• The climate sensitivity to a doubling of pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentration “is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C,” possibly even much higher than 4.5°C.
• Immediate, deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are necessary in order to stave off catastrophic climate change.
• The scientific consensus regarding this paradigm is overwhelming (~97%).

Why is the paradigm collapsing?

• There has been no increase in the Earth’s average surface temperature since the late 20th century.
• Every measure of pre-industrial carbon dioxide, not derived from Antarctic ice cores, indicates a higher and more variable atmospheric concentration.
• The total lack of predictive skill in AGW climate models.
• An ever-growing body of observation-based studies indicating that the climate sensitivity is in the range of 0.5 to 2.5°C with a best estimate of 1.5 to 2°C, and is very unlikely to be more than 2°C.
• Clear evidence that the dogmatic insistence of scientific unanimity is at best highly contrived and at worst fraudulent.

The paradigm is collapsing primarily due to the fact that the climate appears to be far less sensitive to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations than the so-called scientific consensus had assumed.

What is perhaps most interesting is which scientists are skeptical, and why:

Petroleum geologists tend to be sedimentary geologists and sedimentary geology is essentially a combination of paleogeography and paleoclimatology. Depositional environments are defined by physical geography and climate. We literally do practice in a different world, the past. Geologists intuitively see Earth processes as cyclical and also tend to look at things from the perspective of “deep time.” For those of us working the Gulf of Mexico, we “go to work” in a world defined by glacioeustatic and halokinetic processes and, quite frankly, most of us don’t see anything anomalous in recent climate changes.

So, it should come as little surprise that geoscientists have consistently been far more likely to think that modern climate changes have been driven by overwhelmingly natural processes.

Left unstated is that climate scientists depend on grant funding (or careers) that is in almost all cases tied to finding climate change due to man-made processes; Petroleum geologists do not.

Very, very interesting article.