Our basic truths are changing all the time as science makes advances.
We need to accept and adjust to change.
And not be concerned we are changing face.
Perhaps more detective work is needed on why clouds are so dominant?
And in particular, is there a way of controlling the effect they have?
Is it that there are clouds all year round, or does it affect one particular time of the year?
In any case, we need to examine these results carefully.
Maybe I don't need to get rid of my petrol guzzling straight six just yet?

If a theory cannot be challenged or tested, it ceases to be science and becomes dogma. That's what seems to have happened with the carbon dioxide/fossil fuel/big–bad-humans nonsense still being spread like dung on pasture land.

Tom's taken a technical modelling paper and managed to extract a conclusion the paper itself doesn't make.

The study looks at downward longwave radiation at the ocean surface and finds that including detailed cloud variables improves the ability of a model to match observations.

That's hardly shocking.

Clouds obviously affect how much radiation reaches the surface. Anyone who has stepped outside on a cloudy night versus a clear one already knows that. But Harris then leaps from that to implying CO2 isn't really driving warming. That simply doesn't follow.

The paper is about short-term variability in surface radiation, not what drives multi-decadal global temperature trends. Clouds change hour to hour and day to day, so of course they dominate the short-term signal in a model like this. CO2 works differently. It shifts the baseline energy balance of the whole planet over decades.

Confusing those two things is like studying what causes daily fluctuations in electricity demand and concluding that population growth can't explain why electricity consumption rises over decades.

Climate scientists already know clouds are complicated. In fact, cloud feedbacks are one of the biggest uncertainties in climate models and have been studied intensively for years. None of that overturns the basic greenhouse physics.

And there's another tell here. The sweeping claims about CO2 don't come from the study itself. They come from commentators interpreting it through a particular political lens.

So what we're left with is a familiar pattern: cite a legitimate paper, reinterpret it far beyond what the authors claimed, and present it as if it undermines decades of climate science.

It doesn't.

The paper improves a method for estimating radiation under cloudy conditions. That's useful work. But it says nothing about CO2 being a "petty thief" while clouds are the "master criminal".

That's Harris's metaphor. Not the science.

I tend to be too trusting of apparently legitimate articles.
So I have had to change direction yet again.
And do so with good humour.
As I look longingly at the straight six, and ponder the purchase of a bicycle.
Such is life.
Never a dull day.

It seems like we were down this road only a few weeks back. Yet again we see that clouds are the primary driver of what is these days called climate change - it used to be global warming until the globe refused to play along.

As was mentioned in an earlier thread, Svensmark's theory and those related to it, holds that cloud cover is the major factor in changing temperature trends and, in turn, cloud cover is determined by the level of galactic rays that make it through the earth's protective magnetic field and, more importantly, through the sun's protective solar winds.

I recall back in the 1990s, the late, great John Daly pointing out that the climate models of those days essential ignored clouds and that, he opined, when clouds were properly modelled those improved models would be much better at hindcasting temperatures and therefore much more believable in their forecasts of future temperatures.

As we know, climate models have been horrendous at predicting future temperatures. Perhaps better modelling of clouds would make them less horrendous.