Wednesday, December 8, 2010

How bad are the Climate Models?

Predictably bad.  They're all wrong, and all wrong the same way.  Guess whether they're all wrong (too hot) or all wrong (too cold).

[Hint: they don't predict temperatures that are too cold]

Al Fin has a typically in-depth analysis of the whys and wherefores behind this.
The frantic global rush to control human energy production -- and thus all human industry and commerce -- is based upon catastrophic climate models which project a "runaway greenhouse effect" from human CO2 emissions. But are the models believable? Are these pliable constructs of an infant science -- climatology -- trustworthy enough to base the entire human future upon their computations? There are reasons to strongly doubt the reliability of the models. From the paper: Anagnostopoulos, G. G., Koutsoyiannis, D., Christofides, A., Efstratiadis, A. & Mamassis, N. (2010) A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data. Hydrol. Sci. J. 55(7), 1094-1110 (via WUWT) we can see a few detailed comparisons between climate model outputs and actual observations.
Note that this discussion does not touch on programming errors.  Rather, it's architectural failure of the models themselves: the software presumably more or less correctly implements a set of assumptions that simply do not map to the measured world.  This is this first major, multi-model, peer-reviewed article that hindcasts the models, i.e. runs them starting several decades ago, and compares their output to measured temperature.  In every single case, the models predict higher temperatures than we saw.  Every single case.

Don't expect to see big headlines, although this deserves it.  Almost all of the Global Warming hysteria is based on model predictions.  This under cuts what has been traditionally the most formidable argument by the warmists.  Al Fin touches on this, too:
If you still believe in climate catastrophe from anthropogenic greenhouse gases, then you are not likely to change your point of view by looking at observations, data, or evidence which contradicts your point of view. You are one of the happy pawns to be sacrificed at will. But for the rest -- those who seek out information for yourselves, and do your own weighing of the evidence -- for you there is just a bit of fore-knowledge.

You can get involved in politics to attempt to slow the energy starvation reich's agenda a bit, or you can make personal preparations for what is coming, or both. Alternatively, you can try to get in on the big scam. Your move.
I was going to blog on this, but he beat me to it, and did a better job.  RTWT.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I imagine that you're for the most part preaching to the choir, but I really am curious to see how this whole sordid affair looks five years from now.

Jim

kx59 said...

I suspect it will look very similar to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Techinical stock traders have a term for this, it's called "useful lies", except when they produce models that fail, it's only their money that gets flushed.