# Global Warming Redux: Have they lost their credibility? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 15, 2010, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090 "2010-02-15T18:07:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/41 "2010-02-16T03:22:48Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > I’ve spent my entire life listening to conservatives tell me that actions to preserve the environment would destroy the United States. Clean water, clean air, changing the propellant in spray cans, controlling the emissions that cause acid rain - all of those would both not solve the problem and would destroy the economy. They’ve been wrong, every single time. Every single time, wrong. > > You’ll pardon me, I hope, if I’m skeptical about what conservatives tell me about global warming. BTW, the Naomi Oreskes presentation shows how even Republican Presidents ignored the right wing “think” tanks and supported efforts that did reduce acid rain and CFC’s. Unfortunately, after Bush (the father) Conservative leaders also fell for the unscientific research. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/42 "2010-02-16T03:24:20Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I’ve spent my entire life listening to fiscal liberals tell me about how we need to increaes the power fo the government to solve one problem or another. So you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical of a problem when the solution is to drastically and irreversably increase the power of the government. > > Or, in other words, two can play your reindeer games, Frank. Except his works. Yours doesn’t. See, he can conclude that they’ve been wrong every time. You can’t even bring yourself to write those words, let alone defend them if you had. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/43 "2010-02-16T03:26:45Z")
I find no psychologic difference in the pro-AGW bias and the anti-vax bias, and it will take many more Phil Jones/Andrw Wakefields to shake either crowd from a position so close to their hearts. If you ignore for a moment that the vast majority of True Believers for any given paradigm have no actual personal mechanism for getting inside the research itself or (in the case of AGW models) even beginning to understand the hundreds of thousands of lines of code (along with their parametrization assumptions) in the models which produce the frightening predictions, you begin to understand that we form deep attachments to our beliefs which are relatively independent of facts. These deep attachments cause us to behave irrationally. We scurry to proseltyze the persuadable and defend against attackers, because our Great Cause becomes part of our significance. An attack on central icons–the Pope for some; the President for another; a key researcher for a third…–becomes a personal attack on all that we hold dear. We cannot be dissuaded from what we see in our immediate field of view, be it a polar bear swimming in open water, an autistic nephew or a brother miraculously healed of cancer. What we see with our own eyes confirms our biases and nourishes our souls, and we are willing to provide very logical explanations for all that opposes what we have accepted with our souls. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/44 "2010-02-16T03:28:09Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I’ve spent my entire life listening to fiscal liberals tell me about how we need to increaes the power fo the government to solve one problem or another. So you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical of a problem when the solution is to drastically and irreversably increase the power of the government. > > Or, in other words, two can play your reindeer games, Frank. So, in other words, you don’t care if the solution of the problem works? It’s irrelevant to you that the problem has a solution that will work. It’s only relevant to you if the solution involves government action, and if it does, you’re against it? Have I got that right? ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/45 "2010-02-16T03:29:04Z")
blurp ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/46 "2010-02-16T03:31:46Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I’ve spent my entire life listening to fiscal liberals tell me about how we need to increaes the power fo the government to solve one problem or another. So you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical of a problem when the solution is to drastically and irreversably increase the power of the government. > > Or, in other words, two can play your reindeer games, Frank. Just how old are you? Ignoring science was not even in the playbook of the conservative leaders. [http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-990173.html](http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-990173.html) > [@](#): > > President Bush yesterday announced that United States will stop making certain industrial chemicals four years earlier than planned because of new estimates of their damage to the protective ozone layer over the Northern Hemisphere. > > The president’s pledge to halt production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by Dec. 31, 1995, commits the United States to a faster phaseout schedule than most of the industrialized nations that signed the Montreal Protocol - an international treaty that sets a deadline of 2000 for elimination of the chemicals, which are widely used in consumer products. What do we have to be thankful now? > **[The World We Avoided by Protecting the Ozone Layer - NASA Science](https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory/the-world-we-avoided-by-protecting-the-ozone-layer/)** > > The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone—not just over the poles, but everywhere. > [@](#): > > What Might Have Been > > In the new analysis, Newman and colleagues set out to predict ozone losses as if nothing had been done to stop them. The team started with the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model, an earth system model of atmospheric circulation that accounts for variations in solar energy, atmospheric chemical reactions, temperature changes and winds, and interactions between the stratosphere, where ozone is found, and the troposphere, the layer of atmosphere closest to Earth. Their “world avoided” simulation took months of computer time to process. > > The researchers let global emissions of CFCs and similar compounds in the model world increase by 3 percent per year, the rate at which they were growing before regulation in the late 1980s. Then they let the simulated world turn from 1975 to 2065. > > With continued production of CFCs, ozone levels worldwide would have dropped to dangerously low levels. (NASA images by the GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio.) > > By the simulated year 2020, 17 percent of global ozone is destroyed, and an ozone hole forms each year over the Arctic as well as the Antarctic. By 2040, the ozone “hole”—concentrations below 220 Dobson Units—is global. The UV index in mid-latitude cities reaches 15 around noon on a clear summer day (10 is considered extreme today). As for AGW, Bush the father also signed the Framework Convention on Climate Change. [http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/keyevents/bush](http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/keyevents/bush) > [@](#): > > June 12, 1992 Speaking at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, President Bush announces that the United States will not sign a treaty designed to protect rare and endangered animals and plants, saying that it would retard the development of technology and the protection of ideas. The United States does sign the Framework Convention on Climate Change aimed at preventing further global warming. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/47 "2010-02-16T03:34:19Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > So, in other words, you don’t care if the solution of the problem works? It’s irrelevant to you that the problem has a solution that will work. It’s only relevant to you if the solution involves government action, and if it does, you’re against it? > > Have I got that right? No, you have it backwards. YOUR SIDE only get behind a problem if there’s a solution that involves an expansion of the government. I’m currently agnostic on AGW. I’m not saying that global warming (oh, pardon me, “climate change”) is not happening or is not caused by humans or cannot be solved by humans if the answers to both previous quesitons is yes, I’m just saying that it appears that (i) all the evidence is not in yet and (ii) the same people that always advocate more government are, once again, advocating more government. As I said in another thread recently, it doesn’t take too many answers of “increase the size of government” to realize that the goal is to increase the size of government (not to solve the actual problem at hand). ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/48 "2010-02-16T03:34:22Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I find no psychologic difference in the pro-AGW bias and the anti-vax bias, and it will take many more Phil Jones/Andrw Wakefields to shake either crowd from a position so close to their hearts. Whatever you might mean by “no psychologic difference,” there is a vast difference in the fact that one of those position actively rejects the weight of the scientific literature, while the other embraces and relies upon it. If one is empirically minded, one should rely heavily on the scientific literature. To do otherwise would reflect some other psychologic bias. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/49 "2010-02-16T03:36:09Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I find no psychologic difference in the pro-AGW bias and the anti-vax bias, and it will take many more Phil Jones/Andrw Wakefields to shake either crowd from a position so close to their hearts. Please, how do you explain that even I mopped the floor with the last anti-vaxer that showed up? What I see is plenty of evidence that anti-vaxers also use the same underhanded tactics as the anti-AGWs. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > If you ignore for a moment that the vast majority of True Believers for any given paradigm have no actual personal mechanism for getting inside the research itself or (in the case of AGW models) even beginning to understand the hundreds of thousands of lines of code (along with their parametrization assumptions) in the models which produce the frightening predictions, you begin to understand that we form deep attachments to our beliefs which are relatively independent of facts. And repeating this does not change the facts. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/50 "2010-02-16T03:38:28Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I find no psychologic difference in the pro-AGW bias and the anti-vax bias, and it will take many more Phil Jones/Andrw Wakefields to shake either crowd from a position so close to their hearts. > > If you ignore for a moment that the vast majority of True Believers for any given paradigm have no actual personal mechanism for getting inside the research itself or (in the case of AGW models) even beginning to understand the hundreds of thousands of lines of code (along with their parametrization assumptions) in the models which produce the frightening predictions, you begin to understand that we form deep attachments to our beliefs which are relatively independent of facts. > > These deep attachments cause us to behave irrationally. We scurry to proseltyze the persuadable and defend against attackers, because our Great Cause becomes part of our significance. An attack on central icons–the Pope for some; the President for another; a key researcher for a third…–becomes a personal attack on all that we hold dear. We cannot be dissuaded from what we see in our immediate field of view, be it a polar bear swimming in open water, an autistic nephew or a brother miraculously healed of cancer. What we see with our own eyes confirms our biases and nourishes our souls, and we are willing to provide very logical explanations for all that opposes what we have accepted with our souls. Exactamundo. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/51 "2010-02-16T03:39:39Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And repeating this does not change the facts. Huh? He’s saying you aren’t getting at the facts. You are looking at third or fourth level facts, interpretations of interpretations of facts. How you analyse all that is based on your prejudices. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/52 "2010-02-16T03:40:00Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > No, you have it backwards. YOUR SIDE only get behind a problem if there’s a solution that involves an expansion of the government. Bull, that is not the only reason, nor as showed before, a solution that your side is in reality against it. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I’m currently agnostic on AGW. I’m not saying that global warming (oh, pardon me, “climate change”) is not happening or is not caused by humans or cannot be solved by humans if the answers to both previous quesitons is yes, I’m just saying that it appears that (i) all the evidence is not in yet and (ii) the same people that always advocate more government are, once again, advocating more government. As I said in another thread recently, it doesn’t take too many answers of “increase the size of government” to realize that the goal is to increase the size of government (not to solve the actual problem at hand). As already posted, not even Bush father agrees with you. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/53 "2010-02-16T03:42:13Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > Huh? He’s saying you aren’t getting at the facts. You are looking at third or fourth level facts, interpretations of interpretations of facts. How you analyse all that is based on your prejudices. Have you read the thread? The main items of the OP are replied with factual cites and even the persons involved are replying to the critics. As for the Chief, he said that pro-AGW people are like anti vaxers. And that is why agreeing with him was so silly. ---
**Author:** ![Rand\_Rover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/db5fbb/32.png) [@Rand\_Rover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rand_Rover)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/54 "2010-02-16T03:51:51Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Bull, that is not the only reason, nor as showed before, a solution that your side is in reality against it. My side? > [@](#): > > As already posted, not even Bush father agrees with you. And why do you tink I give a shit what “Bush father” says about anything? > [@GIGObuster](#): > > Have you read the thread? The main items of the OP are replied with factual cites and even the persons involved are replying to the critics. As for the Chief, he said that pro-AGW people are like anti vaxers. And that is why agreeing with him was so silly. You still don’t get it. Your “factual cites” are web sites that quote someone else who talked to someone who ran a model predicting something about global warming based on inputs derived from a study performed by someone else. Your facts are fucked. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/55 "2010-02-16T03:55:49Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > I’m currently agnostic on AGW. I’m not saying that global warming (oh, pardon me, “climate change”) is not happening or is not caused by humans or cannot be solved by humans if the answers to both previous quesitons is yes, I’m just saying that it appears that (i) all the evidence is not in yet and (ii) the same people that always advocate more government are, once again, advocating more government. As I said in another thread recently, it doesn’t take too many answers of “increase the size of government” to realize that the goal is to increase the size of government (not to solve the actual problem at hand). The same people who are advocating “more government” re environmental factors for the last 40 years have been shown to be correct all along. The “more government” solution has solved the problems. Did you actually read my post, or did you just go blurp? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/56 "2010-02-16T03:56:18Z")
> [@Chief Pedant](#): > > I find no psychologic difference in the pro-AGW bias and the anti-vax bias There is, however, a significant difference in the scientific basis for the AGW hypothesis versus the vaccines-cause-autism hypothesis. The important difference between pro-AGW and anti-vax is that the former has a lot of research evidence in its favor, while the latter has none at all. > [@Chief Pedant](#): > > If you ignore for a moment that the vast majority of True Believers for any given paradigm have no actual personal mechanism for getting inside the research itself or (in the case of AGW models) even beginning to understand the hundreds of thousands of lines of code (along with their parametrization assumptions) in the models which produce the frightening predictions, you begin to understand that we form deep attachments to our beliefs which are relatively independent of facts. > > These deep attachments cause us to behave irrationally. We scurry to proseltyze the persuadable and defend against attackers, because our Great Cause becomes part of our significance. So what? Most popular opinion on **any** scientific matter, up to and including the heliocentric model of the solar system, falls more into the “True Believer” category than into the category of genuinely informed scientific understanding. To take another example, many climate change deniers themselves are True Believers in the “skepticism” hypothesis. They like feeling superior and patronizing toward people who take AGW seriously (and in some cases, they also don’t want to confront the possibility of climate problems necessitating serious change in their lifestyles or those of their descendants). So they stroke their egos and reassure themselves by indulging in sententious pontificating against “credulous sheeple” on the other side of the issue. But none of this True-Believer stuff, on either side, is relevant to the issue of what physical phenomena are actually occurring in the global climate. In the long run, amateur philosophizing about the psychological mechanisms of belief and ignorance doesn’t determine the fate of a scientific theory. The fact that climate-change deniers are working so hard to keep the discussion focused on these pop-psychology issues, instead of producing credible alternative hypotheses that would better explain the observed data, is an indication of the weakness of their position when it comes to the actual science. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/57 "2010-02-16T03:56:37Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > My side? > > And why do you tink I give a shit what “Bush father” says about anything? Well, you said that you had heard just liberals “during your lifetime” approving of solutions that expanded government. so I guess you were wrong. > [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > You still don’t get it. Your “factual cites” are web sites that quote someone else who talked to someone who ran a model predicting something about global warming based on inputs derived from a study performed by someone else. Your facts are fucked. Sorry, but just saying so does not mean that you are correct, if the facts are fucked outfits like the Petroleum Institute would had say so already and to the four winds. The sources saying that the facts are fucked are indeed ignorant. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/58 "2010-02-16T03:58:58Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And repeating this does not change the facts. Aside from my personal bemusement in the behaviour patterns of pro and anti AGW crowds, and a general interest in human behaviour at a large scale, there are two “facts” around AGW which I personally remain skeptical. The first is the Globally Averaged Temperature Anomaly. And the criticism of Phil Jones is that he has been careless with his handling of that key dataset. Careless? Gee, that seems like a pretty serious concern. The second is the modeling itself; hundreds of thousands of lines of code with best-guesstimates for key parameters and open admission that neither CO2 forcing sensitivity nor feedback loops nor any of a multitude of potential unknowns are accounted for accurately. In general the best that can be said is that all current models trend up if CO2 trends up, but the end-values are remarkably diverse. I don’t need a rebuttal, although I suspect you’ll be compelled to post one. I’m content to wait about ten years and see where the brouhaha goes. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/59 "2010-02-16T04:01:28Z")
> [@Chief Pedant](#): > > Aside from my personal bemusement in the behaviour patterns of pro and anti AGW crowds I don’t think that word [means what you seem to think it does](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bemusement), although it may in fact be an accurate description of your state of mind. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2010, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090/60 "2010-02-16T04:08:39Z")
> [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > Aside from my personal bemusement in the behaviour patterns of pro and anti AGW crowds, and a general interest in human behaviour at a large scale, there are two “facts” around AGW which I personally remain skeptical. > > The first is the Globally Averaged Temperature Anomaly. Really? Where is the reason for that? [http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/08/world-meteorological-organization-wmo-2000s-warmest-hottest-decade-on-record/](http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/08/world-meteorological-organization-wmo-2000s-warmest-hottest-decade-on-record/) > [@](#): > > Now, however, it is official from the World Meteorological Organization, in their news release today “2000-2009, The Warmest Decade“: > > ``` > The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989). > > ``` > > The NYT story was based on the WMO release early today, but NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center also reports today: > > ``` > The 2000 – 2009 decade will be the warmest on record, with its average global surface temperature about 0.96 degree F above the 20th century average. This will easily surpass the 1990s value of 0.65 degree F. > > ``` > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > And the criticism of Phil Jones is that he has been careless with his handling of that key dataset. Careless? Gee, that seems like a pretty serious concern. So serious that you ignored the early post that showed that even with his misplaced data others did research and confirmed his results. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > The second is the modeling itself; hundreds of thousands of lines of code with best-guesstimates for key parameters and open admission that neither CO2 forcing sensitivity nor feedback loops nor any of a multitude of potential unknowns are accounted for accurately. In general the best that can be said is that all current models trend up if CO2 trends up, but the end-values are remarkably diverse. > **[How reliable are climate models?](https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm)** > > \While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.\ > [@](#): > > What the science says… > > While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations. > > There are two major questions in climate modelling - can they accurately reproduce the past (hindcasting) and can they successfully predict the future? To answer the first question, here is a summary of the IPCC model resultss of surface temperature from the 1800’s - both with and without man-made forcings. All the models are unable to predict recent warming without taking rising CO2 levels into account. Noone has created a general circulation model that can explain climate’s behaviour over the past century without CO2 warming. > [@Chief\_Pedant](#): > > I don’t need a rebuttal, although I suspect you’ll be compelled to post one. I’m content to wait about ten years and see where the brouhaha goes. Don’t be silly, the rebuttals are not just for you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/global-warming-redux-have-they-lost-their-credibility/529090.md?page=4)