Climate change alarmism is driven by computer modeling and the IPCC. The IPCC modeling is a collective activity, led by the US Department of Energy. The Trump Administration has not touched this DOE scare factory, but should rein it in.

The DOE activity in question is the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI). The Program was established in 1989 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), located in the San Francisco Bay area. LLNL is a contractor operated lab and the PCMDI is still going strong under the Trump/Perry Administration. In fact one of the leading climate alarmists, Ben Santer, works there.

PCMDI’s original mission was to make clear that different climate models disagree greatly, which means that none should be trusted. But the alarmists soon captured the program and it became the global leader and coordinator for IPCC modeling. This is done through the Climate Model Intercomparison Project or CMIP.

A CMIP exercise directs most of the government climate models worldwide, a hundred or so, to do a set of standardized numerical “experiments,” as their modeling runs are falsely called. These runs produce a multi-model ensemble of simulations that the IPCC then uses to predict human caused catastrophic climate change.

The modelers are only allowed a combination of about ten causes in order to explain past and predict future global warming. All but one of these causes are human. The one natural cause is variation in direct solar energy and it is so small that it really does not even count. None of the other natural causes presently under scientific study are allowed.

Increasing CO2 is by far the biggest allowable cause of past and future warming. In this way the dominant role of CO2 is built in from the beginning. It is not found by the modeling; rather it is assumed and prescribed.

It is therefore no surprise that the IPCC says that global warming can only be explained by human causation, given that human causes are all that the modelers are allowed to use. The reasoning is simply circular, like this: “Assuming that only humans can change the climate we find that climate change is due to humans.” I am not making this up. As silly as it sounds, this is the heart of IPCC alarmism.

CMIP 6 is presently underway and the allowable causes of warming are still effectively all human. The bogus outcome is therefore predictable: humans are causing global warming, which will only get worse.

In fact one of the CMIP 6 requirements is that the modelers run the case where CO2 levels increase by an incredible 400%, compared to the roughly 43% it has increased in the last century or so. This impossible case — ten times reality — is guaranteed to be catastrophic, given the extreme sensitivity of the models to CO2 levels.

Energy Secretary Perry has made it clear that he is skeptical of the IPCC’s climate alarmism. It is therefore tragic that his Department is still running the IPCC modeling show.

What is happening here is that the climate change alarmists, both within and under contract to the Federal Government, are simply ignoring the skeptical policies of the Trump Administration. I imagine that these policies annoy them, but when it comes to carrying out the alarmist mission they are not even looking up from their work.

This is simply alarmist dogma, not science. The entire modeling exercise is built upon the assumption that CO2 is the dominant cause of global warming. This baseless bias is not new. It has been the rule for at least twenty years, probably longer.

What needs to be done is simple — Red Team the CMIP 6 guidance to expose the built-in human causation. The government needs to confront these dogmatic assumptions, which amount to alarmist advocacy disguised as high priced climate science.

Red Teaming is preferable to shutting down LLNL’s CMIP efforts, because these would probably just be picked up by a center of alarmism in another country. But if CMIP cannot be Red Teamed then it should be terminated. So should the alarmist PCMDI.

Secretary Perry needs to live up to his publicly expressed skepticism of climate alarmism, by stopping the rampant alarmism in his own shop.