Hand on heart, Are these four things true?

Reading a rather detailed climate change article this morning (Jaws of the Snake by Roger Pielke, Jr.) suddenly sparks the crystallization of a thought.  I have had awareness of these elements for years but have never formulated it in this particular way and I think the formulation is revealing.  

The received belief among policy makers is that the world is suffering from an inexorable global rise in temperature owing to emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, such emissions becoming of sufficient volume to pose a danger beginning in the post World War II period.  The belief is that the volume of CO2 is directly and causally determinative of global warmth.  

The formulation that occurred to me this morning is that in order to believe the above creed, we need to believe four things with great confidence.

1)  We have to believe that CO2 is a sensitive and commanding causal mechanism for driving a rise in global temperature.  We know there are other major contributors (solar output and fluctuations, clouds, land use, ocean currents, etc.) to global climate conditions.  We have to believe that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is the dominating factor in global heat production and retention.

2)  We have to believe that our data record of global warmth is sufficiently comprehensive (all places), durable (all times), consistent (direct measures, not indirect or synthetic measures), precise, and accurate to create reliable forecasts 

3)  We have to believe that we understand the aggregated implications of a chaotic, evolving, power-law driven set of inter-locking systems known as climate.  Climate is mathematically a wicked problem, and we are affirming that we understand all the piece parts and their interactions of this wicked problem.  

4)  We have to believe that our models properly and usefully represent the complexities of climate forces in order to make accurate forecasts out a century and more.  We have to have great confidence in our modeling prowess of wicked problems.

Since the introduction of the Anthropogenic Global Warming panic in the 1990s, there have been excellent reasons for skepticism.  My personal view is that we ought to be mindful of all emissions (CO2 being only one) of our industrial processes with an eye towards unanticipated side-effects, especially those arising from unanticipated tipping points.  But that is just good common environmental practical sense.  

The AGW belief-system has always smacked of ideology and commercial opportunism.  If you believe AGW, then it provides a basis for a profound reworking of both authoritarian actions and redirection of wealth creation to select insiders.    AGW might still be true, but those consequences invite the recognition that there is a potential self-serving aspect to the AGW belief system.

Over the 30-40 years of AGW panic, there has been a steady erosion in the case.  We know that CO2 is a very small contributor to global warming and that knowledge has be become increasingly firm.  Is there a tipping point where there might be a catastrophic system collapse?  Possibly, but that is the only remaining worry.  We now know that CO2 is neither a direct nor a material driver of temperature outcomes.

We know that our temperature record is a dogs breakfast of estimated, imputed, incomplete and inconsistent data inputs of low precision and even accuracy.  And the record is very, very brief.

Likewise with our knowledge of the complexity of climate system(s) and even more so, our knowledge of how to even model such complexity.

But sometimes, the power of the argument get lost in the details.  When broken out into the above four beliefs, I suspect that the weakness of the AGW panic becomes much clearer.  There are detailed arguments to be had on all four points.  Detailed and legitimate arguments.  

However, I cannot imagine that there is any self-respecting critical-thinker who could put hand on heart and pledge confidence in any of the four at this point in time.  We don't have the evidence to support the critical sensitivity to CO2.  We know our data record is a mess.  We know that we keep coming up with new discoveries about how climate works.  We are becoming increasingly aware of the limitations of modeling wicked problems.

If we cannot affirm all four elements, then the political and commercial case for the dramatic goals and policies surrounding AGW disappear.  We need to retain sensitivity and awareness of industrial externalities but the coercive encroachment on natural rights and the redirection of wealth from some groups in society to other vested interests in society suddenly becomes much more obviously a dramatic misallocation of capital and morally indefensible.