Karl Popper, one of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, argued against classical inductivist reasoning in science. He argued that a scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable — similar to the statistician's practice of proving the null case rather than the hypotheses itself.

Questioning the claim of human-made climate change, I am often dismissed as a "denier" and asked why I don't accept that in this particular arena, "the science is settled."

But anthropogenic global warming (AGW) a.k.a. "climate change" isn't science at all by Popper's standards and is, in fact, a perfect example of that which Popper rejected: pseudoscience founded on an unproved assertion that CO2-drives global warming, conveniently lacking any means of falsification, which has led to the widespread erroneous belief that Earth is warming (only on the computer models), that CO2 is the driver of that warming (occasional correlation, definitely not cause), that computer models can substitute for actual temperature readings (making the data match the theory, i.e., Kierkegaard's "covetous eye on the outcome") and that we presently have a climate crisis to deal with.

To quote Voltaire: "If anyone can make you believe an absurdity, they can make you commit a tragedy."   It is indeed tragic that public information, public education, public funds, and energy policy are all informed by an unscientific claim disguised in the garb of science that has — to date — been neither proved nor falsified. In truth, it isn't science but agenda-driven environmental zealotry, fostered by politicized junk science with an incredible history of failed predictions that should be setting off human BS detectors across the globe.

Although Karl Popper would dismiss the idea that AGW is scientific, let us temporarily grant it the honorific label of "science" and, following that alleged "science," attempt to falsify it per Popper's recommendations.  How might we falsify such a claim, given the necessity of taking the Earth's temperature?

One approach would be to demonstrate that a large country on our planet experienced virtually no warming over the last one hundred years, using official government temperature and precipitation records from that country.

Should that be possible, the alleged AGW and the climate crisis that follows from that allegation should vanish posthaste.  That falsifier exists and is online at this site: climatediscussionnexus.

But the question remains: do facts still matter?

Image: De Balie.