Global Warming bullies: Does the Weather channel founder have a point?

Great Debates
81

Emphasis mine.

Isn’t it more arrogant to assume that you, a person untrained in the field understand the problem better than:

* 1.1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
* 1.2 InterAcademy Council
* 1.3 Joint science academies' statement 2008
* 1.4 Joint science academies’ statement 2007
* 1.5 Joint science academies’ statement 2005
* 1.6 Joint science academies’ statement 2001
* 1.7 International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
* 1.8 European Academy of Sciences and Arts
* 1.9 Network of African Science Academies
* 1.10 National Research Council (US)
* 1.11 International Council for Science
* 1.12 European Science Foundation
* 1.13 American Association for the Advancement of Science
* 1.14 Federation of American Scientists
* 1.15 World Meteorological Organization
* 1.16 American Meteorological Society
* 1.17 Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
* 1.18 Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
* 1.19 Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
* 1.20 Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
* 1.21 International Union for Quaternary Research
* 1.22 American Quaternary Association
* 1.23 Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London
* 1.24 International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
* 1.25 International Union of Geological Sciences
* 1.26 European Geosciences Union
* 1.27 Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences
* 1.28 Geological Society of America
* 1.29 American Geophysical Union
* 1.30 American Astronomical Society
* 1.31 American Institute of Physics
* 1.32 American Physical Society
* 1.33 American Chemical Society
* 1.34 Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia)
* 1.35 Federal Climate Change Science Program (US)
* 1.36 American Statistical Association

these guys?

Isn’t your stance actually the arrogant one?

82

There are 2 billion people in the world who believe that a man died, was buried under a rock and came back to life three days later. If they’re right, I suppose all those guys can be too.

I think the stance that brazil84 and I ‘share’ is that despite what APPEARS to be happening, if in say, five years, everything began to reverse without much in the way of change (which just by the sheer number of people on the planet there won’t be) then the opinions expressed by that list of distinguished gents won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.

83

Your problem is you ignorantly equate religion with science. If it’s because you don’t understand how science works, please educate yourself. Religion is about believing in something for no reason other than it makes sense to you. Science is about coming to beliefs based on testable evidence the scientific community has accumulated. If you don’t believe in science, throw your computer away and run into a forest and plant some turnips, because every single facet of modern life is touched by it.

You and brazil are acting like religous people. You decided that AGW can’t be real so you shut your brains down and only listen to those that agree with you. No matter that they are a handful against a legion and their credentials are laughable.

I’ve said it before, this message board is about fighting ignorance, not wallowing in it.

84

Bravo, bravo. I got to hand it to you, brazil, this is sophistry at its finest. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another Doper who can consistently write so beautifully dishonest posts.

jshore, I’m another person who keeps half an eye on these GW threads, and you deserve yet another compliment for putting up with this. If I ever meet you in person, I’ll buy you a beer. Or give you a hug. Or both.

85

This is much too close to calling another poster a liar to be permissible in Great Debates. If you need to challenge a poster’s honesty, open a BBQ Pit thread.

Knock it off, here.
[ /Moderating ]

86

By the way, before you dismiss my claim about “Risk” as outrageous, you might want to ask yourself exactly how a climate simulation is different from a board game.

You might also want to ask yourself what exactly it means to say that a climate simulation is “based on” principles of physics. What it does NOT mean is that all components of the climate model are inexorably derived from first principles of physics. Instead, modelers must use simplifying assumptions and parameters to make the model work. A lot of simplifying assumptions and parameters. Which is part of the reason why different models very produce different predictions.

Anyway, if one or more of those simplifying assumptions and parameters are wrong, it has the potential to foul up the entire model. So claiming that a model is “based on” principles of physics is like claiming that Sunny Delight is “made with real juice.” Sure, there is real juice in there. But it’s the other stuff you need to be concerned about.

Which brings me to the analogy of Risk. If one looks at the game as a simulation of the world military situation, there are certainly aspects which clearly correspond to reality. But obviously the game is not a realistic simulation of the world military situation. It’s an extreme example, but the point is the same: It’s not so much the “real juice” one should be concerned about. It’s the other stuff that goes in.

So I leave you with my earlier question: What exactly does it mean to say that a climate simulation is “based on” basic principles of physics?

87

or, in other words, to quote Monty Python “It’s only a model!”.

I think comparing Risk and climate simulations is a stupid analogy, myself. The only connection Risk has with reality is that the outlines of the regions match some real-world political boundaries. That’s it.

Global climate models are not just based on a few simplified parameters, as brazil84 is implying. Yes, some physical effects are consolidated and simplified. That’s what makes it a model and not some kind of real-time simulation.:rolleyes:

So what? That’s what those of us who know how science works expect a model to be.
Now, I’ve never worked with climate science models, but I have worked with very good models of Gondwana, simulating crustal plate evolution. And I can tell you that no-one who works with a science simulation expects them to be RTSes. And we do expect them to differ from each other in their results, in their assumptions, in their parameters, in their outcomes. I never expect two runs of plate simulation on the same model to end in the same exact configuration, never mind two different base models.That’s what models are supposed to be like. The greatest value of modeling *isn’t *in finding some killer simulation that exactly matches reality, past and future (as brazil84 seems to be implying). It’s in comparing what all those different models do, how they differ, why they differ, what assumptions make them differ, and also what they do have in common. What makes models most useful is having many of them (and that’s why the IPCC is such a good effort, because it sums up all these diverse efforts).

What brazil84 is trying to attack as modeling’s greatest weakness, is in fact, its greatest strength.

That’s the danger of having laypeople try and tell scientists what they need to do. They just don’t have a grasp of how we actually do what we do.

88

I might also want to ask myself how a climate simulation is different from testicular cancer. But, then again, these questions might just be a complete fucking waste of time if a person just throws them out without offering any reasoning or justification for their use.

This isn’t a question you’ve ever asked in this thread. You threw out an absurd analogy and then followed it with a “so what?”, as if mentioning Risk in and of itself made some kind of stellar logical point for you, even though the analogy is (as you’ve already admitted) “extreme”.

Now that you’ve offered some sort of logical grounding for this extreme analogy, after some cajoling, I can say that I can’t answer your questions. I’m not qualified. I read about this issue, try to study the statistical results to the best of my limited abilities, and come to my conclusions. Maybe one day I’ll have a true handle on the science, but that day isn’t today, and it won’t be anytime soon.

I can say, however, that the rhetorical gambit of making an extreme analogy and then summarily dismissing someone else’s comment with a “so what?” is probably not your best move. I wasn’t really sure about the whole GW thing until the threads here in GD. jshore, at the prompting of you and others like you, has pulled me firmly into his camp despite my initial reluctance.

I’d be tickled pink if the whole global warming thing turned out to be a loud of hooey. I’d be thrilled to join you in saying it’s a bunch of crap, but right now, I just can’t. From my layman’s view of the situation, you aren’t doing yourself any favors. Quite to the contrary, you are undermining your own position.

89

I wrote my first computer program 45 years ago, in an ancient computer language called ALGOL, on a computer that filled up a good-sized room, before a number of the posters on this board were out of nappies. I have since written a wide variety of models, including a radiation-balance climate model. In addition, I have used a variety of computer models for a variety of purposes. I have programmed in C, C++, Visual Basic, R, Fortran, Forth, Mathematica, and Pascal. In other words, I am far, far from a novice regarding computers and models.

The idea that climate models are based on physical principles is true in the same way that a movie that is “based on a true story” is true. Yes, both of them are based on true things … but that’s as far as it goes.

Take Hansen’s GISS climate model model as an example. They built it based on some basic physics, but it didn’t balance (in/out radiation didn’t match), and the albedo was way off. But rather than figure out where they went wrong in their physics, to fix the albedo, they just turned the tuning dial to adjust the amount of clouds … which gave them a correct albedo and radiation balance, but left the cloud coverage way low.

So is their correct albedo result based on physical principles? Only in the Hollywood sense, it’s actually the result of turning the dial to get the albedo correct.

w.

PS - I once built a model of a business (using STELLA, an excellent program which has been used to write simple climate models) to try to predict the future outcome of the business. The model said I’d make lots of money … but in the event, oops, that didn’t happen. Now, that computer model was built on sound business principles … but that didn’t mean the outcome of the model was correct.

PPS - Here’s another example of GISSE “physical principles”. The formation of melt-water ponds in the arctic regions is an important climate variable, because the water (on the ice) absorbs much more energy than the ice. Now, it seems that the melt-water package they use didn’t give good results … so here’s their fix:


C**** pond_melt accumulates in melt season only
        if ((J.gt.JM/2 .and. (jday.ge.152 .and. jday.lt.212)) .or.
            (J.lt.JM/2 .and. (jday.ge.334 .or. jday.lt.31))) then
          pond_melt(i,j)=pond_melt(i,j)+0.3d0*RUN0
        end if

For those not versed in Fortran, this means that melt-water ponds can accumulate only from day 152 to day 212 of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and from day 334 to day 31 (of the next year) in the Southern Hemisphere. Now it would be true to say that this kludge is “based on physical principles”, because melt-water can only accumulate in summer, it re-freezes in winter … but it’s not physics, it’s just coopering up a hole in the program by brute force. There is no physical principle that says meltwater ponds can’t accumulate on the 151st day of the year, but they can on the 152nd day of the year …

90

Perhaps if you spent a little less time hurling insults, you would have seen the point from the beginning, which is that “based on” doesn’t really say much.

Duh. I asked it earlier in the same post.

I basically agree.

91

I haven’t insulted you. I was instructed to stop “challenging the honesty” of your posts, and I have done so, but for the record, I don’t believe at all that you are advocating positions you disagree with. I just think your posting style, though ingenious in certain ways, nevertheless leaves a lot to be desired.

And I agree it doesn’t say much that the models are based on real science. But there was more context to that quote which made it much more clear what jshore was talking about. His point was that the models are well enough understood that at least one scientist was doing similar though less sophisticated work a hundred years ago. And what do you do when you quote him? Snip all of that context to justify to yourself a silly comparison to a crappy board game.

I get that you, for whatever reasons, feel confident enough to deprecate an entire scientific discipline. Congratulations. But I have an ever-so-slight amount of experience myself with scientific models, and your lack of confidence has not persuaded me. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your attempt to compare a scientific model (a valid attempt to understand the world) to a children’s game is just beyond the pale, even if you do believe the model is flawed.

In my opinion (and it’s just my opinion) you do yourself many rhetorical disservices, especially when you make these extreme analogies, knowing (as you knew) that they are extreme and yet refusing to provide any justification for them, which means you then have to go back and explain yourself later when people protest, which they will of course do. The last example was so bad that Lobohan even renewed the earlier Pit Thread against you.

Really, what I’d personally like to see from you, brazil, is a thread about scientific modeling in general. If you think you know so much more about how it works than the experts, then would you be averse to discussing the topic of modeling in general? An OP could be made so that the general scientific principles could be discussed without the distractions of focusing on GW itself. Since so many of these GW threads devolve into your repeated statements that you don’t trust the models, spending some time talking about modeling itself might be beneficial.

Of course, you don’t have to do this. But if you don’t want these GW threads to continue ending in the same way (with jshore and others upholding the integrity of the models and you disparaging them), then it might be beneficial all around to make that the focus of at least one thread. Just a thought.

“Duh”?

If you wish to give the appearance that you’re actually serious about the topic, you might also consider some changes in your vocabulary. When you write like you don’t give a shit, then people start to believe you don’t give a shit.

I mean, duh.

92

Dr. John Holdren says “Global Disruption” would actually be a better description.

BTW, you are being paged.