CIRCULAR REASONING IN CLIMATE SCIENCE 

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EXAMPLES OF CIRCULAR REASONING IN CLIMATE SCIENCE

ITEM#1: THE RESPONSIVENESS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 CONCENTRATION TO FOSSIL FUEL EMISSIONS.

This relationship is at the very foundation of climate change science because without this relationship nothing remains of the needed rationale for the underlying activism against fossil fuels and for the promotion of renewable energy that serve as the foundational motivations for the climate change movement. And yet this foundational relationship in climate science between fossil fuel emissions and rising atmospheric CO2 concentration has been established with circular reasoning as follows.

First, the theory that fossil fuel emissions end up in the atmosphere and cause atmospheric CO2 to rise is found to be inconsistent with the measured and required rate of fossil fuel emissions for these changes because changes in atmospheric CO2 are too slow to be driven by fossil fuel emissions. A study of the data showed that atmospheric CO2 needs to rise twice as fast as what is found in the data if it is driven by fossil fuel emissions and based on that the theory was modified to posit that only half of the CO2 in fossil fuel emissions cause atmospheric CO2 to rise and the other half must therefore go somewhere else and perhaps it is absorbed by the carbon cycle.

But how is this new modified theory to be tested? A theory derived from the data cannot be tested with the same data because that would be circular reasoning. And yet this is exactly what we find in climate science. The most fundamental relationship in climate science that serves as the foundation for the call to a climate action to cease the production and combustion of fossil fuels, is a creation of circular reasoning.