>> Thomas Kuhn, in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," notes that
>> when scientific disciplines have undergone major shifts in paradigms
>> in the past, it hasn't been the case that most of the older
>> researchers who supported the older paradigms were instantly converted
>> to "the truth."
>>
>> Instead, those with reputations to protect have generally continued to
>> insist on the validity of Ptolemaic astronomy, phlogiston theory, pre-
>> relativity physics etc. until their generation died off. A new
>> generation of researchers with no prestige at stake, and no emotional
>> investment in the older paradigms, then has usually ensured the
>> virtually universal acceptance of the new thinking.
>
> In this case there is no "old guard" defending any real position.
The "old guard" are defending their models, which are based on a
forcing that is driven by the temperature of the tropopause. But
the sceptics have not yet described the correct model, and so
are unaware that it means that global warming will be more rather
than less severe as they fondly imagine.
But the change of paradigm is much deeper than that. It stems
from the concept of uniforitarianism propounded by Charles Lyell.
He persuaded everyone that because geological time is so vast, then
geological processes must be slow. But this is false. For instance it
may take a million years for a mountain like St. Helens to grow, but
that is not the result of a slow and even evolution. It is the result of a
series of catastrophic eruptions interrupting long periods of quiescence.
Because slow smooth change is the current paradigm, everybody
subscribes to it, even if they don't know its name. Both the sceptics
and the scientists believe in it, and that is why people like Gavin have
difficulty arguing against the sceptics, because both sides believe in
the same paradigm.
Wally Broecker was one of the first to point out that climate may not
be stable, and James Lovelock has suggested some mechanisms that
may lead to this instability. But the real problem is that the climate
models were first conceived based on the idea that if solar radiation
increased, then the outgoing radiation would increase to match it. That
is not the case.
What does happen is that the outgoing radiation from the greenhouse
gases remains the same, and it is changes in cloud cover that ensure
the radiation balance. Since global cloud cover does not increase
linearly with temperature, then you get non-linear changes in climate,
such as those at the start and end of the Younger Dryas stadial, when
we had already abruptly entered the inter glacial.
Over to you, Michael. Let's hear your defence of the "old guard"s position.
Cheers, Alastair.
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