AGW: the science may be settled, but the models sure aren’t
A new report acknowledges what I recall reading for some years now:
Computer modelling used a decade ago to predict how quickly global average temperatures would rise may have forecast too much warming, a study has found.
The Earth warmed more slowly than the models forecast, meaning the planet has a slightly better chance of meeting the goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, including limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
Scientists said previous models may have been “on the hot side.”
The report was published in Nature Geoscience, and does not retreat from the basic theory of AGW and the idea that emissions need to be curbed. But the failure of models can’t help but at least call into some question—if people are honest about it—the validity of the projections in general.
More:
The original forecasts were based on twelve separate computer models made by universities and government institutes around the world, and were put together ten years ago, “so it’s not that surprising that it’s starting to divert a little bit from observations”, Professor Allen added.
According to The Times, another of the paper’s authors, Michael Grubb, a professor of international energy and climate change at University College London, admitted his earlier forecasting models had overplayed how temperatures would rise.
So, the authors of this new paper appear to be some of the people who made the original projections. It must have cost them a lot to issue this paper, and the results must have been a pretty powerful contradiction to their earlier forecasts—results that almost literally could not be denied.
One of the authors is quoted as saying, “When the facts change, I change my mind, as [John Maynard] Keynes said.” That would put him in the company of a fairly small percentage of people, since a mind is a difficult thing to change—even with the facts forcing the issue.
Granted, though, the authors find no change in their basic theory of AGW and as well as that theory’s general political ramifications. I have written on AGW many times before, and I’m not going to go into a whole song and dance on the general topic right now, except to say that I’ve read hundreds of hours’ worth of articles and find both sides somewhat persuasive, so for me the jury is still out. My go-to person—the scientist I find to be most fair, objective, and comprehensive in evaluating these things—is Judith Curry. As I’ve done before, I suggest you follow her blog. I don’t believe she’s written about this report yet (at least, I couldn’t find it), and I’m eager to read what she has to say about it if and when she does.
IMO computer models are great for landing a rover on Mars, not so much for predicting an extremely complex problem of predicting the ever changing relationship between atmosphere, ocean, and sun. Personally, I find the idea that raising CO2 levels from x concentration in the atmosphere to x.0002 concentration causing dogs and cats raining down from the sky and killing the polar bears to be absurd.
I conclude, stupid old farm boy that I am, that perhaps there is an hidden agenda involved. 😉
I am waiting for an explanation of the necessity to adjust observed temperatures, and why those adjustments invariably seem to support the notion of recent warming, to be published in a form that is available to the general public, and in terms that we can understand.
Until then, I remain deeply skeptical; which of course, in the vernacular of the believers, makes me a denier.
I, too, trust the opinion of Dr Curry, along with those of a few others.
It is a scam. Global warming is a prediction about an event in the distant future based upon corrupt data and flawed computer models. The proponents have been wildly wrong for years but for some reason they are still considered to be credible.
I predict Rutgers beats Nebraska this Saturday but that the Cornhuskers win the national championship in 2100. Creighton, of course, will be national champions in soccer and basketball well before 2100.
It is all about creating a state of fear, the better to control the LIVs, scam billions from people like Matt Damon, and concentrate power in the hands of the global elite. Period.
Cornhead,
I predict the Cornhuskers will not defeat the Hawkeys until 2525 if anyone is still alive.
So I wonder if the primary publication merely said that our models overshot the degree of warming, or did they mention the tiny problem that the warming trend has completely stalled out for more than 15 years? Oh wait! NOAA “proved” that last fact false by ignoring the high quality temperature measurements and cherry picking various low quality measurements, in a manner repudiated by their own retired chief scientist.
Most temperature data comes from urban areas. As those areas grow, creating more concrete to absorb solat heat, more air conditioners to spew heat, and magically temperatures rise in those areas. I recommend everyone to read Crichton’s State of Fear, or at least the author’s notes at the end of the tale.
I spent many years of my life in the physics department, and let me tell you, that bunch would have been thrown out on their collective behinds in an instant if they tried to sell to sell global warming. Just to take an example, there’s the famous hockey stick that was used to “prove” that the world is warming at an accelerating rate and used by Al Gore to get rich. It was built on nonsense like tree rings from a single tree were used to extract the global temperature for the 1600s. Huh? Why put up $100 million satellites to cover the whole earth when a thermometer in your backyard would do? As far as I can tell, none of the big shots in AGW stood up and trashed it. This is not honest science,or even science at all.
The models are built on bad ground based thermometer data that’s been very obviously manipulated so there is no way they could predict anything, even if the mathematics of chaotic systems didn’t make it impossible. The entire field can be summarized as bad data, terrible science, and brilliant politics. What politician wouldn’t love to tax the air we breath?
As for Judith Curry, she’s a late comer to disbelief, awakened by the vicious attacks on her for expressing some doubt. Even so, she’s still a “lukewarmer” and has been unable to accept that the science is wrong, carbon dioxide does not create catastrophic warming of the Earth, or quite likely, any warming at all. Unlike our hostess, she’s only a partial changer.
The best site for Global Warming is Wattsupwithat. The real giveaway is climate gate, the release of the e-mailsof the various ” climate scientists”.Note “GLOBAL WARMING” has fallen out of use since the warming stopped 18 years ago.Climate change is better since you can blame anything on CO2.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/climategate/
Parker:
LOL. And a Ferentz will still be coaching at Iowa.
But that’s the point: hold a seance in 2100 and let me know the temps on Earth. Or if the Corn are national champs.
The so called climate scientists have over 100 climate models. If they really knew what they were doing they would only need 1.
If someone with a college degree says, “The science is settled,” their college should refund everything that was paid toward an education that somehow let someone go through four years of study without being exposed to hard science, or the reality of science being a thing that cannot be “settled.”
Science is a journey of discovery that routinely involves overturning everything everyone thought they knew about something because one person finds something new, or disproves something everyone thought. Science inherently involves questions, real-world results and reproducibility – all things shunned by the AGW zealots.
In 325 AD, the Council of Nicea convened so that the learned scholars of their time could sift through the body of writings by people who had been dead for generations, primarily about a person who had been dead for centuries, to form a consensus on which ones to include in the official belief set.
This, clearly, is what the AGW people want, and believe in – a revealed religion in which all is known and cannot be questioned. Just because, in the case of AGW, some of the existing body of knowledge came from science does not change that actual science does not operate on committees, councils and consensuses.
The principle drivers of terrestrial climate are tectonic, solar, and galactic, and I’ve had enough exposure to some raw data to be pretty sure the “models” are “inaccurate,” to put it politely.
I’m of the opinion that solutions which remove the effects of industrial processes from the immediate vicinity of the consumer public are simply a mechanism for transferring control to non-deomcratic entities. Governments. Business. Whatever. People supported various clean air and clean water acts because they could see and smell what used to be called pollution. Take that away and they have no reason to support change, other than taking the words of agenda (and funding) driven “experts.”
Oddly enough, I had a private conversation with Ralph Nader about 25 years ago, and he agreed with me. The phrase he used was, “Plug up the toilet.” He felt this was the only way NIMBY’s could be made to pay attention. Then again, he also thought the causus belli of the first Gulf War was, “To get the cameras off Neil Bush.” Oh, well.
But the point is correct. Electric cars and the like don’t solve anything. They just remove the problems from voter attention, while funneling tax money where some folks want it to go.
The science is not settled. The so-called “greenhouse effect” of CO2 was characterized in isolation, then its behavior was extrapolated to global proportions, thus the need for liberal (i.e. divergent) and progressive (i.e. monotonic) adjustments, which still demonstrate no consistent skill in the past, present, and future.
As I have written here before, IIRC, global warming and climate change models ARE NOT science.
They are models.
Science requires reproducible proof. Like, adding reagent X to reagent Y always yields the same product Z. Always. Not sometimes.
See the recent hurricane Irma’s and Maria’s projected (or modeled) paths, with their marked variances. Because they are models, and cannot be independently reproduced to yield verifiable objective results, they are not science. May be based on science, but are not of themselves science in its classical sense. They are models, much as a mannequin clad in a dress in a shop window is not a woman.
If the Deep State and secret societies say the science is settled, then people will kneel down and submit to the new reality. Even if the world isn’t being destroyed by man made global warming, geo engineering will make the lie into a truth soon enough.
Unless people can prove me wrong by draining the DC “swamp” without dying.