The model…
Presently, the best climate models fall many orders of magnitude short of the power and intricacy needed to effectively predict the long-term climate patterns that emerge from the interactions of all these planetary systems. And that’s not a failure of science; it’s just the reality of how tough the problem is.
Predictions are made by building models using the smartest simplifications we have thought of and running them on the most powerful computers ever built. Basically, it’s the best we can do right now.
But there is a major failure of science going on.
The failure is the lack of transparency and honesty about how feeble these models are and how much we should stake on their all-too-fallible forecasts. Thus the same problem continues: climate science has once again botched a prediction that its models were underequipped to make.
That is my main objection to AGW.
We have made great strides in understanding weather, at least in the short term. Understanding how climate changes is 10E9 more complex. Sometimes its healthy to admit we are fleas arguing over who owns the dog.
The programs are horrid… really really horrid… too much to even begin listing issues. many are fundamental to iterative models (and ignored). one fundamental thing about iterative models where the output of the model becomes the input of the next step, is that errors propagate and do not self correct, and given that all computers round numbers to work with them, they all generate errors in such programs that eventually make them deviate. which is why such programs can only predict things so far into the future till the deviations from calculations make the answers pseudo random with no way of knowing how far out of wack they are. there is also no way to fix this problem, only push it off by increasing decimal accuracy, but even a deviation of 1 as far out as 35 decimal places becomes an issue faster than most would ever thing possible.
horrid horrid models…
I wonder what Al Gore and Joe Biden think a mathematical model actually *is*….a hot chick with algebraic symbols printed on her clothing?
I have heard the following argument from someone who has a decent scientific education and is a fairly high-level player in the technology industry. Paraphrasing: “Well, we have to consider the downside if we are wrong. If we act on the assumption that Climate Change is real…and we’re wrong…then all we lose is a lot of money. If we act on the assumption that it is *not* real…and we’re wrong…we basically destroy civilization.”
This is basically a secular version of Pascal’s Wager, and has the same problem as the original. Pascal argued that you might as well accept the existence of God since the benefits of doing so were potentially infinite, and also the costs of not doing so, regardless of the probabilities. But of course believing in the Christian version of God isn’t going to do you much good if Islam is theologically true, or if any one of dozens/hundreds of now-forgotten religions turn out to have been the right ones.
Similarly, there are a large number of things that can destroy civilization…asteroid strikes, EMP, epidemics, etc, not to even mention purely social disintegration…and “fixing” CC does nothing for these other possible destroyers.
I cynically believe the *real* reason for the focus on CC, as opposed to asteroid defense or EMP hardening, is that it is much better as a level for increasing political control of all aspects of society.
From the same article linked to;
“Climate science acts like it is fighting a holy war. There are only those who are just and those who must be silenced and stopped at all costs. Anyone who mounts reasonable logical, empirical, or skeptical challenges to the orthodoxy must be ruined, not by counterfactual evidence, but by vicious attack.”
Of course it’s a holy war. When belief in a ‘beneficent providence’ is rejected, a substitute must be found. Nature does not tolerate a vacuum, nor does human nature tolerate belief that this is all there is… human nature demands something larger than itself to believe in.
This is because we ALL subconsciously ‘know’ that there is more to our existence than what our senses can detect. Faced with nature’s apparent indifference to our survival, fearful egotism leads us to declare that no such beneficent providence could exist.
But the physical universe in which we live testifies otherwise, emphatically declaring that,
The evidence is all around us, our very existence is literally dependent upon it.
I am smart enough to know that I don’t know anything about climate science, but I am smart enough to know that the things people are throwing out as ways to fix AGW are ridiculous and will cost a fortune. I certainly support funding research into other forms of energy, but I want to give the science a chance to work before we waste money putting solar panels in places where the sun doesn’t shine. Get the environmentalists out of the picture.
David Foster…
It, the thesis, as they work it, is unfalsifiable.
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NASA established fifty-years ago that carbon dioxide is THE universal rate limiting compound for photosynthesis — as long as water, sunshine, and minerals were sufficient.
Across the entire tropics, these factors ARE always sufficient.
So, the carbon capture rate — growth rate — in the Amazonian jungle HAS TO HAVE stepped up.
It’s easy to prove in a lab.
It’s impossible to prove in the Amazonian basin.
This result also carries over to agriculture — ESPECIALLY China and India. NASA’s research implies that fully 10 to 20% of the crop yield now seen there is due to the increase in the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
So…
What the alarmists are proposing would take the rice out of the mouths of hundreds of millions of souls.
That’s a scientific fact that’s already been established.
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The opposite extreme is seen with bio-diesel// bio-fuels.
They universally adopt the pioneering research by NASA — to grow algae — in vitro.
EVERYONE uses bottled carbon dioxide in their experimental reactors — to boost their yields.
How much ?
Try 400 to 600 percent.
Plants today are what they are via evolution. Their primary struggle has been to live and grow — while being STARVED of carbon dioxide.
The reason why todays coal beds exist — is because when carbon dioxide was more concentrated ( higher partial pressures ) plant growth was super-charged.
Dead plant mater couldn’t even decay. It just piled on, layer after layer.
The planet was running as a hydroponic garden.
There is no other mechanism that explains coal.
The alarmists haven’t even made it up to wrong.
Steve Hayward of Power Line reported that the models are very simplified because otherwise today’s super computers would still be crunching the numbers.
I have just enough exposure to modeling to be skeptical of the methodology. I know that computing power has grown enormously since I was last involved, but so has the complexity of the task. Beyond any such limitations, I always hearken back to the words of a rather pompous young Professor, who was trying to defend SecDef McNamara’s methodology to a class of skeptical Naval Officers: (sic) “If the assumptions are correct, the outcome will always be optimum”. Ah yes. But, who controls the assumptions?
Up until the past few weeks the Media here in SoCal were frequently warning of the potential for flooding from the El Nino effect. As the dry weather drags on, not so much. Who forecast the El Nino effect; and what models did they use?
All this fuzz about the climate problems are related to the ability of human being to understand and stomach the universe creation and how complicated, even today science have no answers to it due to limitation with human brain and their creation..
All those who thinks they are smart, telling us what they believe, trying to convince others scientifically they are wright with what they see they all forgot very simple fact its GOD who is the master of all of this and the time will come to the end of our world.
Btw, during Moon Mission in 1969 when Apollo landed on the Moon, on board of Apollo there were measuring devises to measure the distance between the earth and the Moon.
The surprise was the result of Apollo measurement of the distance compared with 4000-5000 year old record (Babylonian) the difference in Meters?
S0 4000-5000 years they measured and got the results after that period of human development and scientific achievements we did not differ from their records!!
Then the ancients screwed up.
The Moon is marching AWAY from the Earth… inch by inch.
Like Everest rising above India.
( Everest has picked up 27 feet since the 19th Century measurement. )
“The Moon continues to spin away from the Earth, at the rate of 3.78cm (1.48in) per year, at about the same speed at which our fingernails grow.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-12311119
The mechanism is a tide in the quasi-solid Earth, itself — not the oceans.
I opined this in 1973 to my professor.
He blew his stack — twice.
I later found out that he’d received his PhD at Caltech by crafting a computer simulation of the Moon-Earth system — and its tides.
My thesis contradicted his PhD thesis.
At all other times, he was as quiet as a field mouse.
Today, my theory — never ascribed to me — is now official dogma… universally accepted — proved by laser reflection off the Moon and satellite pertubation during their orbits.
Hi blert,
Not taking issue, just pointing out there is at least one other explanation I’ve come across:
“The reason why todays coal beds exist – is because when carbon dioxide was more concentrated ( higher partial pressures ) plant growth was super-charged.
Dead plant mater couldn’t even decay. It just piled on, layer after layer.
The planet was running as a hydroponic garden.
There is no other mechanism that explains coal.”
See book ‘The Deep Hot Biosphere’ by Thomas Gold
http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Hot-Biosphere-Fossil-Fuels/dp/0387952535/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456808464&sr=1-1
Geoffrey:
“…it also appears the universe is ‘designed’ for bio-genesis and human life.”
This is the argument cosmologists make, and they’re basically philosophers with science and math degrees.
We may not be in the only universe. Others may have physical laws that don’t work for human life, but only allow for other forms of “life”, which would see us as impossible.
To imagine we know enough about all the factors and how they interrelate to create long term climate is already monumental hubris. To believe for a femto-second that humans will ever understand exactly what the whole of the universe is and how it works and where it came from or especially why it’s here at all is hubris to the googol-power.
I’ve been fascinated by astronomy my whole and could write a book of my own about how totally strange and mystifying the universe without even getting into quantuum mechanics, which in many ways makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
One of my favorite sci-fi short stories is by Isaac Asimov. It’s also his own favorite in a lifetime of prolific production and it perfectly captures this whole concept.
The Last Question
It’s a short and enjoyable read with a surprise ending.
My response to Climate Change Cultists has been this: “In the past millennium, there were three major climatic changes: first, the Earth grew warm enough that Greenland was actually green and arable; then it grew cold enough that rivers, lakes, canals and harbors froze over much of the year; then it warmed again to where we are now, somewhere in the middle. Now tell me, what has been the effect on humanity of those climate changes?”
Their answer: “I don’t know.” Then silence. Works like a charm, every time.
(Actually, I do know something about one of the changes — when it grew cold after the Medieval Warm Period, 10% of Europe’s population died.)