:rolleyes:
Right. And that was peer-reviewed by…
…
…
…I’ll wait.
It’s an entirely lukewarm editorial which seems to largely go against the current developments in the peer-reviewed science? That’s pretty straightforward.
Well that’s just straight-up wrong.
Really? They are? News to me.
This just in: winters are cold! This post is just vile - the point made therein a lovely combination of vindictive, judgmental, and stupid.
Can you be more specific about just what point you are trying to make? Because I although I agree with the veracity of what you’re saying, I don’t see its relevance either in the context in which I mentioned climate models or in the larger context of validating AGW.
I was making the point earlier that we know that oceans are responsible for the overwhelming proportion of the earth’s heat uptake compared to land and atmosphere; in light of this, and what we know about the earth’s energy budget, it’s plausible that a temporary increase in the heat uptake of deep ocean layers could cause an observed slowdown in land and atmosphere warming. The fact that climate models simulate this circulation behavior adds to the strength of the hypothesis. That’s it – as I said before, it means no more and no less than that. I’m not sure what the relevance is of throwing in what sounds like a set of canned talking points about why climate models are no good.
It bothers me because similar accusations are made against climate models when they project the impact on climate of increasing levels of CO2. The basic argument for AGW doesn’t rest on climate models; it derives from multiple lines of evidence across a vast array of phenomena, beginning with the first principles of radiative transfer physics, paleoclimate observations, and observations during the instrumental temperature era.
That said, climate models are an important tool in helping to quantify the impacts of GHG’s. And while I think we all recognize the limitations you mention, they seem to underrate or ignore the fact that climate models are reliable enough to be extremely useful. And there are large numbers of different climate model types – for instance traditional atmosphere-ocean coupled general circulation models, the newer and more comprehensive earth system models that include biogeochemical cycles, and many specialized and regional models. Are you suggesting they’re all useless? All modern AOGCMs and ESMs are based on physical principles, not just random attempts to match climate behaviors. Furthermore, major intercomparison initiatives like CMIP5 provide opportunities to evaluate radically different models by comparing them against each other, often with surprisingly good agreement. The argument that all these different models successfully reproduce historical climate behavior due to some bizarre coincidence begins to sound like outright denialism.
I just now read it.
Did you read it?
Do you even understand it?
It freaking supported the exact points I made previously. Here are a couple of many relevant quotes:
“What does the accuracy of a climate model’s simulation
of past or contemporary climate say about the accuracy of its
projections of climate change? This question is just beginning
to be addressed”
Did you read that? JUST BEGINNING TO BE ADDRESSED. Why? Because it’s difficult, progress is slow, etc. etc.
“For any given metric, it is important to assess how good
a test it is of model results for making projections of future
climate change. This cannot be tested directly, since there are no
observed periods with forcing changes exactly analogous to those
expected over the 21st century.”
Another obvious point - you can’t do experiments with the climate. We can’t just change the climate and see if the response matches the model.
It’s clear the people that wrote that report understand the complexities and limits and future challenges.
Serious questions:
Did you read that chapter?
Did you comprehend the details?
My only point was to temper the confidence of the result, I wasn’t sure what level of confidence in modeling and understanding the system you were implying.
I wouldn’t disagree with any part of what you just posted.
“we can’t really perform experiments on the climate and the timelines are pretty long”
Uh, no, that was a very absolute point, again, if you are correct then doing indirect experiments are never valid and we should had drop relativity early. The point stands, one can not say such absolute say so when experiments were already done, timelines are taken into account (Latif) and progress has been done.
We can’t perform experiments ON the climate (as in manipulate the climate) to see if the things we think are important when modeling it really are the things that are important.
Do you think we are able to manipulate the climate to test our models?
Yes, the experiment **continues **with the human released CO2.
What you’ve cited here describes the construction of a model (yet again). Do you understand that in the scientific method, constructing a model is a separate step from conducting an experiment to validate that model?
If you really do believe that experiments are possible on the global climate, could you tell me what you would use as a control group?
Uh, they told you that they investigated how models compare with reality:
As the volcanoes showed the “control group” is a period with little or no volcano activity. And so on regarding other possible forcings that could driving the current warming, but the human signal is showing now, as the skeptics at Berkeley earth put it:
Not so much vile as pitiotic. Ají de Gallina might come point out to you that the event happened just a week after the summer solstice, waving that about as a rippling banner of irony. But, at 67°S, the ship was beyond the southern ocean current, a 125 sverdrup flow that helps isolate Antarctica and keep it pretty darn icy all year long.
Worse yet, the ship became trapped in the ice because of extreme weather, which tends to be an effect of climate change: it is quite possible that the very global warming that the scientic detachment on the ship were studying did in fact contribute to their being trapped.
The “pricelessness” here is but an enormous whooosh.
Good ghod man, that is some badass use of “sverdrup.” That is my new favorite word.
I can imagine it being used for some really disgusting hyperbole.
What did they manipulate in the climate in that case? Hint: nothing.
At this point I can only assume that English is not your first language, so let’s try this: do you know what it means to “manipulate” something?
The point is that we can’t just change aspects of the climate this way or that to see how the whole a system responds and whether our models match that response.
At first I figured that was a typo, but when I couldn’t come up with anything it might have been meant to be, googled and learned. Thanks!
No, but we can take note when unusual things happen and see how well the models fit, Pinatubo being an excellent example.
Your point is valid that climate models are very difficult to validate, especially as they have a lot of tweakable parameters that have been tweaked to fit historical data, so we can’t validated them using the past, only the future. A number of models are proving to be fairly effective at predicting the current situation from that of 10 years ago. Of course, given a boatload of different models, some will work and some won’t.
Yes, it’s difficult, but modeling is pretty much the only tool we have, and a lot of effort goes into continually checking and updating the models.
Don’t expect GIGO to make the slightest admissions against interest. His style doesn’t permit it. Regardless, he’s an excellent resource for information and understanding. Yes, I know, he’d be more believable if he showed a bit of understanding of the valid points made by others, but it’s grueling to be constantly fighting the good fight against the ignorance of the naysayers, and he gets stuck in his defensive mode.
BTW, you’re wrong that we can’t make experiments. I’m confident that when climate change starts causing significant geopolitical and economic problems, we’ll start trying things like sulfur injection. Bingo! Experiment! Unfortunately, that’s not the ideal scenario, and we can thank the political clout of the American skeptics for it.
Not true. Not even close to true.
That pernicious myth needs to be curb stomped. Once and for all.
Fight ignorance, don’t repeat it.
Nature did, really once again you are trying to make things like the experiments that confirmed relativity useless.
When you are reduced to manipulate semantics I don’t think you have a good point.
As history shows, science progresses also by waiting for conditions in nature to change so variables can be investigated. In this case the accumulations of CO2 is a change that can be detected and as even skeptical scientists report, humans are playing a part. Most scientists report that we are the main drivers now and the effect of human released CO2 will increase.
Of course not,
I have to point out that some who think I’m not making slight admissions is not really paying attention, nor it seems that they are paying attention at the absolutism that deniers and even lukewarmers are showing even here:
BTW, speaking of not repeating ignorance, it has to be pointed again to ignorance like that.
Going for absolutes like declaring that no experiments can be performed is just telling us a very incomplete view of what researchers are doing, and then continuing to claim that we can not look at past timelines implies the denial of paleoclimate science.
The global warming mythos has become so persuasive to the warmists that they actually believe that before global warming there weren’t extreme winters like the NH has been experiencing, including the extreme cold and the polar vortex scare.
They actually want to claim the winters as caused by global warming. At which point all semblance of science is gone. They stand firm on their pseudo-scientific pedestal, convinced that nothing can disprove their belief.
Which is actually true. Nothing can get through the thick headed warmist mentality.
How about you start, then. What have you got? Of substance, I mean, not this “Oh, wrong, wrong, WRONG!” stuff. This is not The McLoughlin Report, it is serious discussion.
